Falling (7 page)

‘Of course I love you. I don’t know. I just
dread
you going. I mean, it somehow feels worse than I know it is.’

‘Six weeks,’ he repeated. There was no longer any if about it, it
was
six weeks. He soothed and consoled, made love and slept. She lay awake for a long time trying to keep her
head above the rising tide of misgivings, unnamed, unknown, but there.

What she never afterwards understood was how he had been feeling that evening. Sometimes she thought that he had simply been assuaging any guilt he had by spending every penny he then possessed
upon her. Sometimes she thought that he had been truly divided – sometimes that he had wanted to go to the States to escape temptation in the form of Marietta. (She could not think that for
long, as she discovered fairly quickly that Marietta had also gone to Hollywood.) She had begun by thinking simply that the parting was hard for both of them, but naturally less hard for him
because he was the one going to new realms.

He rang her when he got there, the evening after his first day in the studio.

‘Just camera tests,’ he had said, ‘and they’ve cut my hair and I’ve done five interviews for TV and the trade papers. Oh, and then they took me out to the most
fantastic Chinese meal. Now I’m going to zonk out. I’ve got a couple of days off and I feel as though I could sleep for a week.’ Then he asked about her. ‘Did you take Sykes
to the vet?’

‘Yes. He’s got an abscess due to that awful ginger cat attacking him.’

‘He’s a bit of a wimp, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t see that not wanting to attack other people makes one a wimp.’

‘I see I’m speaking of the cat you love. I suppose the moment my back is turned you’ve let him back into your bed?’

‘He just sort of seemed to be there. I hadn’t the heart . . . !’

‘No. I expect in your shoes I’d do the same.’

‘The licence only applies to cats,’ she reminded him.

‘The trouble is that while I don’t think the hotel would turn a hair if I imported a girl, they’d almost certainly veto any cat.’

That sort of talk went on until she heard him yawn and told him to go to sleep and much love was exchanged.

After that he called her every other day. What was evening for him was morning for her and she was usually drinking her China tea in bed when he called. She worked in the mornings and looked for
the new place to live in the afternoons. It was neither a good nor a bad time – more a kind of limbo. She had finished the first draft of her play – a contemporary version of Orpheus
rescuing Eurydice with the name part, she hoped, for Jason.

The weeks dragged by. She did not at first notice that he spoke to her after longer intervals until she thought she had found exactly the right flat for them and waited for two days for him to
call, to no avail. So she called him at his hotel, but he wasn’t there, which seemed odd at six in the morning (his time). Then, because she had to say yes or no to the flat or risk losing
it, she called the studios to leave a message for him. When, the following morning, he did not respond, she tried the hotel again. This time she asked if he was staying there or away. He was away.
She decided to take the flat, only to find that someone had offered more for it; she had the choice of upping her bid or getting out, and chose to lose the flat. When he called the following
morning, she discovered that she felt angry with him, and he, who’d opened warily with, ‘They tell me you’ve been trying to get hold of me,’ became cold and defensive.
‘Surely you can decide about a
flat
without me.’

‘Next time I will.’

‘Good!’

There was a silence. Then, she said, ‘Well, how is everything?’

‘All right. We’re behind schedule.’

‘Much?’

‘I don’t know.’

Another silence – they frightened her. ‘I miss you. Shall I come and join you?’

‘Better not. I keep awful hours and I’m knackered at the end of the day. Don’t worry about me, darling. You just get on with—’ And then the line went dead. She
waited a minute and dialled his hotel. He wasn’t there. He must have called her from the studios, she thought, as she waited for him to call back. But she heard no more from him. She spent
the rest of the day, of that week, clearing out the cupboards in the flat, so that the move, when it happened, would be easier. In the middle of one darkening afternoon the telephone rang, but it
wasn’t him, it was her agent, Anna Blackstone.

‘Just wondered how you were getting on.’

‘I’ve finished the first draft.’

‘Good. Do you want me to see it?’

‘As a matter of fact, I sent it to you this morning.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s only the first draft.’

‘Why don’t we have dinner at the weekend? Then I’ll have read it.’

‘Fine. Where shall we go?’

‘Come to my place. It’ll be quieter.’ There was a pause, and then she added, ‘Unless you want to come earlier?’

‘Saturday would be fine.’

It
was
fine. For the rest of the week when she was not worrying about why he had not called, she looked forward to her evening alone with Anna, whose company
a deux
she realized
she had been missing for a long time. She had become so used to doing everything with Jason that except for the odd lunch – usually in crowded restaurants where Anna seemed to know everybody
– she had not spent time alone with her since before her marriage, and seeing her with other people, even Jason, or perhaps especially Jason, was not at all the same.

One of the things she loved about Anna, she thought, as she lay in her bath after the day’s clearing up, was her sameness. Ever since she had known her, Anna had had her iron-grey hair cut
short with a rather fierce fringe, had always worn black trousers and a black cotton high-necked sweater or, in summer, a white collarless shirt. She had always seemed neither old nor young,
neither fat nor thin; she had a husky voice that many found seductive, but she had never been seen or known to pair up with anyone. Her face had a workaday, rather homespun appearance, except for
her eyes, which occasionally gave the lie to her being simple or homespun. She was a brilliant negotiator and, even more valuable from Daisy’s point of view, a good positive critic,
thoroughly at home with incomplete work. And her flat would be comfortingly the same.

She lived on the top floor of a house in Bedford Square that consisted of three rooms, a tiny kitchen and a bathroom on the half-landing below. It had no heating, except for two ancient gas
fires, and draughts skidded in through the beautiful windows and came to a screeching halt as they struck one’s face. Books stacked in both directions lurched on cheap, once-white painted
bookshelves – occasionally one of these collapsed under the strain and its occupants were then stacked on the floor. A landscape mirror hung over the mantelpiece, so badly foxed that, as Anna
had once said, one looked like somebody from a Le Fanu short story in it. All these things came to mind as she climbed the elegant staircase. The rest of the house was always dark and quiet at
night as it was entirely taken up by offices of various kinds.

Anna stood in the open doorway, smiling and with a drink in her hand.

‘Is that for me?’

‘It’s for you to try. If you like it, I’ll make you one.’

She sipped it: it was the most marvellous colour.

‘Campari and red Cinzano?’

‘And gin. It’s a negroni. I’ve got rather keen on them.’

‘I’d rather have a glass of wine. No, I won’t – I’d like a negroni.’

‘I do admire the speed with which you change your mind, no mucking about. Come in. The smell of food is a stew. I always think one feels better about cooking smells if you know what they
are.’

Daisy sank gratefully onto a stool before the fire.

When Anna had given her her drink, and they had both found their packs of cigarettes and lit up, she felt Anna’s sharp appraising eye upon her and said quickly, ‘How’s the
literary world?’

‘Underpaid, undersexed and absolutely
everywhere.’

‘What do you mean, “everywhere”?’

‘I mean that you need to have a rather serious, confidential lunch, and you pick what you think is a nice quiet place and, lo and behold, there are at least three lots of people
who’ve had exactly the same idea.’

‘You all listen to each other.’

‘No – but every now and then you hear things. And
they
hear things. It’s not evil, it’s tiresome.’

Again she felt Anna’s eye upon her but before she could attempt a second deflection, Anna said, ‘Would you rather we ate, and then talked about the play?’

‘I think I would.’

‘So, I’ll just say what an interesting and difficult idea it is and how much I admire you for tackling it.’

‘But?’

‘No buts now. No buts at all, really. I just want to know one or two things. Enough. I daresay we can find
something
else to talk about while we eat.’

Anna came back with the tray of food and together they laid the small round table. Anna served the stew, and Daisy poured the wine.

Then she found herself saying, ‘I’m a bit worried about Jason.’

‘Oh? In what way?’

‘Well, he suddenly seems to have become elusive – I mean when I call he’s never there, and he has stopped calling me with any regularity. I haven’t heard from him for six
days now.’ She looked at Anna, willing her to be breezy and dismissive, but she said nothing.

‘He thought it would only be six weeks, and then at least he would get back for a break, but it’s been more than that and he hasn’t even
mentioned
coming. I suggested my
going there—’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Better not, he said. He said he was working flat out and too tired or something. I don’t know what’s going on.’

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then Anna reached across the table and held her hand. ‘I’ve got to tell you something – not good. I hate it, but I can’t
not
tell you.’

‘What is it? What?’

‘Jason was in Paris last weekend.’

‘In Paris? In
Paris?
How on earth do you know? What do you mean anyway?’ But already she had begun to know. Indeed, as she recounted the telephoning – and the subsequent
lack of it – since he had been gone, it seemed so clear that he had come to an end with her that she could not see why his being seen in Paris without her was in the least a shock.

She said something of the sort to Anna, who replied, ‘But a shock isn’t always something that you weren’t expecting. It’s often more a secret dread coming out.’
After a minute, she asked, ‘What else is there?’

So then the rest of it got told – Marietta, the girl she had met at the party, whom Jason had met at the earlier party. ‘She thinks you know,’ Anna said. ‘She thinks
Jason has told you. It was because I was sure he hadn’t that I had to tell you. She thinks she’s going to marry him, you see.’

‘I expect she’s right,’ Daisy had said dully.

But Marietta had been a shock of the most straightforward kind. When, as she had done then, and ceaselessly, she tried to see how and when things had started to go wrong, she could find nothing
– no indication, not the faintest clue, except his saying that he did not want her to join him in L.A. Then, when she thought that,
everything
he had said that last evening seemed to
be full of hidden meaning. His refusal to dine with Bernard and Marietta, the way in which he had said that he would miss her terribly . . . But always she came back to Marietta being a shock. If
she could have thought they were happy, had
been
so happy, and – not all but some of the time – he was engaged with Marietta, how could she ever discern about anything? How could
she feel that she had ever been, could ever be, enough for one other person?

That evening had been the beginning of the desert. Anna had been a real friend, letting her talk, weep, rage, struggle with comprehension and acceptance. She had made her stay the night with
her, had supplied a sleeping pill with some whisky and a hot-water bottle. She resolved to cry quietly as the spare room was a mere slip partitioned off from Anna’s room and she did not want
to keep her awake, but in fact she fell into exhausted sleep as soon as her feet got warm. Then there had been the next day all waiting to be got through somehow.

She had gone back to her flat and found a letter from him, postmarked New York. ‘Darling Daisy, This is the most difficult letter I’ve ever had to write in my life’, it began.
It went on to describe his struggle (agonising, according to him, but unsuccessful) not to fall in love with Marietta; the pain that they had both endured at the thought of hurting her (Marietta
was the sort of person who would naturally feel that), and the conclusion that he had finally reached that there was no other way for them but to be together. There was then a lengthy description
of his feelings for Marietta and hers for him. The letter ended with his pledge of eternal friendship.

She read the letter four or five times: in spite of the night with Anna, she found it at first impossible to take in. How could
anybody
– how could
he
be writing a letter
like that? The pain of its matter was only equalled by the crassness of its manner. So she should be sorry for him having to write such a difficult letter! He had hardly ever written her letters of
any kind, she realized; only occasional, loving, funny little notes. Perhaps, she thought, as she blinked away the scorching tears, perhaps he had found
them
difficult to write as well. For
what was happening as she read and reread the awkward string of clichés was that not only did they destroy the future, they were annihilating the past. If he could feel as he said he felt
now, he must have been lying about what he felt for her during their two-year
affair
– she would not call it marriage. No, he had wanted her and, unknown and penniless, marriage must
have seemed a good deal. Now he wanted someone else more and he no longer needed either her money or her help. Why should
she
want to know anything about his feelings for Marietta? She read
the letter again, trying to find some other reason in it that accounted for his no longer loving her, but she could find nothing.