Authors: Joanna Trollope
‘Bad memories,’ Vivien said, putting a glass of whisky down in front of him.
He blew her a kiss.
‘Horrible,’ he said.
The man in the gingham shirt approached the till and slowly laid down a large single-volume life of Napoleon.
‘Please,’ he said, over his shoulder.
Vivien slipped the card she was holding into a slot and hurried across. The man, staring dreamily into the space behind the till, was holding out his credit card. As she reached to take it, her mobile phone, in her handbag under the counter, began to ring in an insistent crescendo.
‘I’ll ignore that,’ she said brightly.
The man nodded. He watched her slip the book into one of Alison’s recycled bags, and run his card briskly through the machine. Then he bent and signed his name with the elaborate care of one who has just learned to do joined-up writing. Vivien watched him leave the shop, and then she seized her bag and rummaged in it for her telephone.
The caller had been Eliot. What was Eliot doing, ringing at five-thirty on an Australian morning? Was he ill? Vivien cast a glance at the mother and toddler. The toddler was now asleep in her buggy and her mother was grazing dispiritedly along the shelf of self-help books. Vivien rapidly dialled Eliot’s number.
‘Hi, Ma,’ Eliot said. ‘Are you all right?’
There was a pause and then Eliot said, ‘I’m great, Ma.
Why?’
‘It’s five-thirty in the morning. Why are you awake at five-thirty? Why are you calling me Ma?’
‘It’s a beaut morning,’ Eliot said reasonably. ‘We’re going to the beach’.
‘So you rang to tell me it’s a lovely day?’
‘No,’ Eliot said, ‘I rang because Dad rang me and I’d forget otherwise. I’d forget if I left it’.
The young mother pushed her buggy slowly past Vivien as if Vivien did not exist. Vivien watched her without pity, as she struggled with the door.
‘What,’ Vivien said more loudly when the shop was empty, ‘what would you forget?’
‘That it doesn’t matter to Ro and me that you can’t come for Christmas. We’re going to Bali’.
‘What?’
‘We’re going to Bali for Christmas,’ Eliot said. ‘We’ve got cheap flights. So it doesn’t matter’.
Vivien pulled Alison’s stool towards her and perched on it.
‘You said Dad rang you?’
‘Yeah’.
‘And Dad said we couldn’t come for Christmas after all?’ ‘Yeah’.
‘Did – did he say why?’
‘You should know,’ Eliot said. ‘Work or something’.
‘When did he ring?’
There was a silence, and then Eliot said uncertainly, ‘Yesterday?’
‘Well,’ Vivien said, her voice not quite steady, ‘why are you ringing me?’
Eliot sounded surprised. ‘To be polite’. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Dad said he thought you’d be a bit upset so I thought if I rang you and said we wouldn’t be here anyway you’d feel better’.
‘But as I didn’t know—’
There was another silence and to stop it becoming complicated Vivien said, with an effort, ‘How lovely. Going to Bali’.
‘Yeah,’ Eliot said, ‘we’d like a break’. In the background, on a sunny blue morning in Cairns, a girl’s voice said something Vivien couldn’t hear. Eliot said, ‘Mum? Gotta go—’
‘Yes, darling’.
‘You take care’.
‘Yes,’ Vivien said. ‘Yes’.
The shop door opened and the man in the gingham shirt came in again holding the bag with the book in it.
‘Thank you for ringing,’ Vivien said. ‘That was very -thoughtful’.
The man came slowly up to the counter and laid the bag carefully on it.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said, staring past Vivien, ‘I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind’.
* * *
Leaving the stage after the final curtain call, Cheryl Smith said to Lazlo, ‘Like a drink?’
Lazlo hesitated. Edie, untying the ribbons of Mrs Alving’s lace cap, was just ahead of them.
Cheryl followed his gaze.
‘You don’t have to go everywhere she goes’.
‘I don’t—’
‘Beg
pardon,’
Cheryl said, ‘but you’ve gone home with her every bloody
night’.
Lazlo said quickly, ‘I’ve been living in her house. It seemed polite’.
‘Break the habit of a lifetime,’ Cheryl said. ‘Come and have a drink with me’.
Lazlo looked at her. She managed to make Regina’s maid’s clothes, dowdy though they were, look as if they barely contained her.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Cheryl said. ‘Something to your advantage’.
‘Well—’
‘Go on,’ Cheryl said, daring him. ‘Mummy’s boy’. Lazlo pushed past Cheryl in the narrow corridor behind the stage and put his hand on Edie’s shoulder.
‘Edie—’
She turned.
‘I’ll be a bit later tonight. I’m going to have a drink with Cheryl’. ‘Are you?’
‘Yes. Will you get a taxi?’
‘Probably,’ Edie said. ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry’.
She gave him a faint smile. ‘Got to get used to different routines now anyway’.
‘Even if,’ Lazlo said, flattening himself against a wall for the stage manager to get by, ‘even if I wasn’t moving out, there’s only four weeks of the run to go, anyway’.
‘Unless we transfer’.
Lazlo looked away.
‘Not – much talk of a transfer lately—’ Edie glanced down at the cap in her hands. ‘Funny. I’ve got rather used to this’. ‘Me too’.
She lifted her head.
‘You go and have a drink with Cheryl. You need to talk to actors your own age’. ‘It isn’t that—’
‘Well,’ Edie said bravely, ‘it should be’.
Cheryl led the way at determined speed to the pub where Lazlo remembered almost breaking down after his first rehearsal. It was full and hot. Cheryl shouted at him that she wanted red wine and then disappeared to the ladies. When she came back, Lazlo had taken their glasses out on to the pavement and had found seats at the end of a picnic table dimly lit by a square yellow light falling from the window of the pub. Cheryl, in a denim miniskirt and her slouch boots, sat down on the bench attached to the table, and swung her legs over so that Lazlo and the two men already sitting at the table had a prolonged view of her knickers. Then she smiled graciously at them and picked up her wine glass.
She gestured with it towards Lazlo.
‘Happy days’. ‘I hope so—’
‘I’m in a film after this,’ Cheryl said, ‘on location in Norfolk, playing a single mother with a drug habit. I’ll be perfect, won’t I?’
Lazlo nodded.
She took a gulp of wine.
‘What about you?’
‘I don’t know’.
‘Come on, Laz—’
Lazlo said cautiously, ‘Russell says I can read for a couple of his accounts—’
‘Oh please,’ Cheryl said, ‘Ibsen to chicken nuggets?’
‘I—’
‘You,’ Cheryl said, ‘have a crap attitude. And a crap agent’.
‘He says he’s trying. And two others have been in touch—’
Cheryl leaned forward, folding her arms underneath her bosom and creating an impressive cleavage.
‘My
agent wants to see you, sad boy’. Lazlo removed his gaze from Cheryl’s breasts.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. He’s seen you twice. He wants you to ring him. He’s told me to tell you to ring him’. ‘The others—’
Cheryl leaned forward even further and jabbed at the table beside Lazlo’s beer glass.
‘No, Laz. Not a “Come and see me sometime and maybe I’ll think about it, but probably I won’t” sort of
agent. Stuart is for real. Stuart is a top agent. Stuart wants you to ring him tomorrow morning’. She paused and leaned back a little and then she said, ‘Stuart has a casting for you’. ‘He can’t—’
‘He can. He has. He wouldn’t be asking to see you if it wasn’t for something specific’.
‘But my—’
‘Ditch him,’ Cheryl said. ‘He got me this part!’
‘Ditch him,’ Cheryl said again, ‘if you’ve got any sense’.
‘But he’s only seen me in this—’
‘For God’s sake,’ Cheryl said, ‘and when did showcases get better than bloody Ibsen?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lazlo said, ‘and thank you’.
She stretched a hand out across the table and took one of his, firmly.
‘You really are rather sweet’.
The men at the other end of the table stopped talk
ing.
‘Now your hair’s a bit longer,’ Cheryl said, ‘you’re quite attractive. Very attractive really’. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘Very fanciable’.
Lazlo attempted to pull his hand away.
‘Sorry—’
‘Oh come on,’ Cheryl said. ‘Live a little. Why d’you think I go to all this trouble?’
Lazlo pulled his hand free. One of the men at the table gave a little yelp of laughter.
‘Sorry,’ Lazlo said again.
Cheryl gave him an amused glance. Then she shot a look up the table. She picked up her wine glass and struck an attitude with it.
‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Mummy’s boy’.
Maeve paused in the doorway to Russell’s office. She was carrying a takeaway beaker of coffee and a complicated document from their accountant, flagged with little yellow stickers. Russell was standing in his dormer window, hands in pockets, staring out. Nothing was open on his desk: it looked as if he had not only not started work, but had also turned his back on the very idea of it.
‘Room service,’ Maeve said.
Russell turned his head.
‘You’re a good girl’.
Maeve put the coffee down carefully on his desk. ‘The line in the play is “You’re a good little pudding,
Mrs King.”‘
Russell sighed. Then he turned round completely and lowered himself into his desk chair as if he was convalescent.
Maeve laid the folder from the accountant down in front of him.
‘Three signatures. I’ve marked where. Do you think you can manage that?’ Russell nodded.
‘Shall I stay,’ Maeve said, ‘and guide your hand?’ Russell glanced at her, then he slowly reached to pick up his pen.
‘After all these years,’ Maeve said, ‘do I still have to tell you that you should never sign anything you haven’t read and understood?’
Russell put his pen down.
Maeve laid her hands on his desk and leaned on them. ‘The fight’s gone out of you,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it?’ He said, staring at the document in front of him, ‘I’m just tired—’
‘You’ve been tired for weeks,’ Maeve said. ‘You’ve been out all hours at things a tinker wouldn’t trouble himself with, and your house isn’t your own, and nor is your wife and you can’t get up the energy to lick a stamp. Can you?’
‘It’s only age—’
‘It’s not,’ Maeve said, ‘it’s attitude. It’s circumstances. Your present circumstances are not conducive to your health and well-being. What are you trying to prove?’
There was a pause and then Russell said, clearly and slowly without looking up, ‘I was trying to fill a gap’.
‘Well,’ Maeve said, ‘there you have it’.
‘And the gap is still there’.
‘Tell her’.
‘I can’t,’ Russell said.
‘Of course you can! She’s a reasonable woman—’ ‘No,’ Russell said. ‘Why not?’
He looked up at her, his face slightly sideways. He said, ‘Because she’s got a gap of her own. One she’d never thought she’d have’.
‘Oh,’ Maeve said, ‘those children—’
‘No,’ Russell said. He picked his pen up again and pulled the folder towards him. ‘No, not the children. Work’.
‘I was going to tell you, doll,’ Max said. He drew imaginary intersecting lines on his chest. ‘Honestly I was. Cross my heart’.
Vivien sighed. Max had been an hour later home than he had promised and she had spent that hour vowing that she would not, the moment he walked through the door, confront him about not going to Australia. And then she had heard the front door slam and Max’s quick steps coming down the hall and the minute they were in the kitchen she’d spun round from the cooker and said, ‘Eliot rang today’.
Max had taken a pace backwards. He’d always done that, when attacked, as if physically retreating before gunfire, and it annoyed her quite as much as it always had done.
He then put his hands up, as if surrendering.
‘How was he?’
‘Don’t,’ Vivien said. She was holding a wooden spoon coated with sauce. ‘Don’t what, honey?’
‘Don’t,’ Vivien shouted, ‘pretend you don’t know!’
Max dropped his hands. He came forward and stood in front of her in an attitude of contrition.
‘I was going to tell you, doll. Honestly I was. Cross my heart’.
Vivien turned back to the cooker. ‘Ringing Eliot about something that concerns
me
isn’t just something that slips your mind. It’s deliberate’.
Behind her back, Max closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them and said, ‘The thing is, Vivi, I didn’t know how to tell you’.
Vivien didn’t turn.
‘Tell me what?’
‘That – oh hell, this is so embarrassing’.
‘What is?’
Max came and stood beside Vivien. He touched her arm. She shook him off. ‘It’s money, doll’. She shot him a glance.
‘What is?’
‘I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid this isn’t the year for going to Australia. I’m so ashamed. I’m so ashamed to tell you that there just isn’t the money. Simple as that’.
Vivien tasted her sauce and reached past Max for the salt.
He seized her outstretched arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Vivi. I shouldn’t have got your hopes up’.
Vivien removed her arm from Max’s grasp.
She said, ‘You’re not running the flat now. Your living expenses have halved. What d’you mean, there isn’t the money?’
Max drooped.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. Honour bright, it’s not there’.
Vivien said unsteadily, ‘You promised me’.
‘Oh, look now, doll, it wasn’t a
promise
. It was a great idea, a lovely idea to go out and see our boy, but it was only an
idea
. Be fair!’
Vivien put the saucepan to the side of the cooker and turned out the gas.
She said again, not looking at him, ‘You promised me’.
‘Look here,’ Max said, ‘we’ll go in the spring. I’m sure I’ll see my way clear in the spring—’
Vivien looked at him.
‘Where’s the money gone?’
He spread his hands.
‘Maybe it wasn’t there, doll, maybe I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t give you everything you wanted’. He tried a smile. ‘Maybe I was just being a bit over-optimistic. You know me’.