Authors: Patrick Gale
The orchestra and singers were breaking up for lunch. Suddenly the place was noisy with unmusical operations and yelled instructions among the technical crew.
‘How do you do?’ he said, offering his hand in the half-light. ‘Edward Pepper.’
‘Oh my God,’ the woman drawled to Sandy, with whom she had clearly already struck up one of those instantly conspiratorial understandings at which American women so excelled. ‘He doesn’t recognise me.’
‘Mr Pepper,’ Sandy explained with a proud grin, ‘This is our honorary chairwoman, Miss Toye.’
Edward looked again at the blonde coiffure, the thin, vermilion lips. It was her.
‘Myra?’ he stammered.
She took off her glasses and was instantly recognisable, though only as the woman she had made herself, not as the woman he remembered.
‘Who did you
think
it was?’ she asked. ‘Her mother? Give me a kiss darling. It’s been too long.’
He kissed her cheek. Her laugh as he did so and the extraordinary resilience of her flesh were those of a younger woman, but the way she rested a hand lightly on his shoulder spoke of her true age and reassured him.
‘You look stunning,’ he said.
‘Well thank you. And so do you. Doesn’t he look good, Sandy? Your hair’s gone white.’
‘So, I would imagine, has yours.’
She laughed again, and lost her dark glasses somewhere in the folds of her coat.
‘Don’t worry, honey,’ she told Sandy. ‘This is entirely fake. It never suffered, but they charged just as much for it as the real thing, so
I
did.’
He kissed her again, still amazed.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘I was going to,’ Sandy explained, ‘but Miss Toye told me you’d disappear at the very mention of her name.’
Something in the way she said ‘Miss Toye’ spoke of hopeless enslavement.
‘You must let me buy us lunch,’ he said, leading them back through the bar and on to the mirrored staircase. ‘The dress rehearsal doesn’t start until two-thirty.’
‘My treat,’ Myra insisted.
‘Let’s go Dutch,’ he countered, ‘and both treat Sandy.’
‘Er … I’d love to, but I’ve got a few things to sort out with the publicity people,’ Sandy said quickly. He knew what this lie was costing her and made a mental note to return the favour.
Those of his friends Edward thought of as famous were well-known only in the households of the intelligentsia. Myra’s fame was on quite another plane. As he led her the short distance from the opera house to an Italian restaurant where he often took lunch, pedestrians turned to stare, taxi drivers would down their windows to call greetings and he was given the impression that if they stood still, the street would soon be choked with people pressing forward simply to gawp. The restaurant was fairly expensive, its clientele studiously blasé, and yet even in there Myra’s arrival caused a flurry and the head waiter led them immediately to the corner table Edward had never succeeded in booking before. He suspected he would have no such trouble in future. As champagne was brought to them with the manager’s compliments and an admirer who had glimpsed her out in the street sent in some flowers Myra remained apparently impervious. At last, when the fuss had died down and they had both placed their orders – she for a spartan salad that appeared nowhere on the menu – she slipped her headscarf off on to the back of her chair and removed her dark glasses. She narrowed her eyes slightly at him in a near-smile that felt far more intimate than her laughter when Sandy had been with them.
‘Does this often happen to you?’ he asked. ‘It never used to.’
‘Television,’ she sighed. ‘It’s huge. It is to cinema what cinema is to books.’ She raised her champagne flute. ‘Old times,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ he said, less certainly.
‘You don’t sound too convinced.’
‘I mistrust nostalgia.’
She arranged her scarf across her shoulders, detecting a draught and smiled dryly at the young waiter who brought their food. He noticed the waiter’s hand shake as he topped up her champagne and wondered whether she had a lover at the moment, since she was clearly defying age and ageing anything but quietly.
‘How did Alison get hold of you?’ he asked. ‘Or was it Sandy?’
‘I think it was a combined effort. It didn’t take a detective to find out where I was staying – the papers were full of it. Anyway, I told you I was at Claridge’s in that note I sent with the flowers.’
‘Thank you for those,’ he said. ‘I was touched that you bothered.’
She waved away his thanks with an impatient gesture that recalled her younger self.
‘I’m surprised at you wanting to get involved in all this,’ he said.
‘Are you?’
‘After the book,’ he explained. ‘I thought you might be angry at the things I told your biographer.’
‘But who do you think sent her to see you? Venetia Peake is many things to many men, but she’s not a mind-reader. I admit I didn’t think you’d show her
all
the letters but then again I thought it was rather sweet of you to have kept them so long.’
‘You’d kept some of mine too.’
‘Sorry, darling. I hadn’t, actually. The whole lot turned up in the library of some university in Texas. God knows how. Some maid must have stolen them and sold them. Don’t be hurt. It happens all the time.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I even got a letter the other day from some drag queen in New York who had one of my old Balmain frocks and wanted to check which shoes I’d have worn with it.’
As she laughed she patted the back of one of his hands; another gesture he remembered. Image by image, the past Myra was reassembling herself before him.
‘You’ve hardly changed at all really,’ she said after a moment. ‘And you’re a much nattier dresser than you used to be.’
‘I’m much richer than I used to be.’
‘Money has nothing to do with it. Don’t let anyone cut your hair by the way. It looks great that length. Manly. Do I sound terribly American now? I’ve been talking to a few producers over here and I’m worried they think I can’t play British any more. Do I?’
‘Only now and then. I like it. It makes you sound more relaxed.’
‘As opposed to my old voice, you mean? Do you remember? I can still do it. Listen!’ She assumed the stilted, clipped tone she would have used to play one of her romantic heroines in the ‘forties. ‘Oh darling. I’m so terribly
terribly
happy.’ He laughed. Encouraged, she went on. He wondered if she were quoting an actual script or making it up as she went along. ‘Sometimes, when I’m all alone here, with the wind in the trees and all those terrible shadows on the stairs, I get so frightened but then I remember there’s you and I feel alright again. Oh
darling
.’
‘It’s good. Really good,’ he chuckled. ‘You should stop doing all that nonsense and start playing some comedy, on stage.’
‘Night after night? It would kill me. The Shaw was only a short run and that was purgatory. And my voice goes nowhere in a big space. And what do you mean, nonsense?’
‘Well … I –’
‘It’s all right. It was crap. I know. But it paid a lot of debts.’ She sighed heavily. ‘And Claridge’s is very expensive nowadays.’
‘Jamie used to watch it every week,’ he told her.
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not. And his – And Sam. They watched it every week. Nothing got in the way of it. Jamie was furious when they wrote you out of the series. In a strange way he seemed to give up trying to stay well after that.’
‘Was it very hard?’ She touched his hand again but this time she left her fingers there for a moment or two. ‘What am I saying?’ She took her hand back. ‘Of course it was hard. It must have been hell. Was he sick a long time? My dresser died of it last year. He took four years from start to finish. Four years. Jesus.’
‘I suppose Jamie was lucky,’ Edward said. ‘Alison said he went very fast compared to most people but then, he asked to be taken off medication.’
Myra creased her face in sympathy.
‘I suppose he might have gone on a lot longer than that otherwise. But you don’t want to talk about this.’
‘Yes I do,’ he insisted. ‘I brought the subject up, remember?’
He broke off a piece of bread to mop up his sauce. She had finished with her salad and pushed it to one side.
‘I keep remembering how he looked at the end,’ he told her. ‘It’s like after Sally was killed. I remember him in dreams. He got so thin, Myra! It changed his character, to look at him. I mean, he was never perfection. His feet were too big and he’d built up his muscles out of all proportion to his build –’
‘Boys will be boys.’
‘But he always, oh, I don’t know. He always exuded well-being. His skin was golden rather than white, olive really, like my mother’s, and he had thick hair –’
‘Like you.’
‘Yes.’ Edward touched his own. ‘Yes. I suppose so. And he had the kind of voice that carried across the most crowded rooms it was so full and confident. But the last time I went into his room he was wasted. Alison was washing him, I remember, and when I came in through the door he looked like some limp Christ in a Spanish
Deposition
.’
‘A what?’
‘You know; where they show Jesus being made ready for the grave. His hair had got all dull and thin, his cheeks had sunk in, his lips were cracked. They always seemed to have this kind of off-white spume on them at the end. His lower ribs stuck out so much it looked like he had four bony breasts.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Sorry. I’ll shut up.’
‘No.’
‘Let’s talk about something else.’
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘Okay.’
They were plunged into silence, trying to clear their minds of the unappetising image he had conjured up between them. Their waiter returned to clear the table and offer them dessert menus. He ordered coffee, she a mint infusion.
‘So,’ she said at last, ‘your opera. You must be very proud of all the fuss.’
He shrugged.
‘People like to make a fuss. But yes, I’m pleased. It’s strange. I don’t think it’s any better than I remember it, not really, but time’s moved on. So much has happened since I wrote it. First time around it was like an amateur dramatic passion play.’
‘And now?’
‘Now it’s as if the story’s got a new meaning.’
‘It’s about Job, right?’
‘Yes. Only now it seems to be about survival not disaster.’
‘It’s you that’s changed. Losing your wife and children doesn’t seem so appalling when you get older because it’s the sort of thing older people expect. Kids expect everyone to live forever. We were so young, you know. Back then.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I thought I was ancient when I got involved with you. I was barely thirty, for God’s sake!’
‘But the thing with Job,’ he said, ‘is the ending. They all come back to life again at the end. I used to think that was so cynical. God gives him this terrible trial then just says, oh what the hell, live to be an old old man and have all your kids and wealth back twofold. I used to think that was so cynical. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘Teddy Pepper! Have you become a romantic?’
‘Hardly that,’ he laughed. ‘But. Well. I think I might be opening up to possibilities.’
She nodded, an actress playing a wise old woman.
‘Will you come to the dress rehearsal?’ he asked. ‘We could sit together.’
‘And sit through it all again tonight? Darling, try to remember, I’m a philistine. Tonight will be lovely, though.’
‘You’ll sit with me?’
‘If you don’t mind people talking. They will talk, you know, Edward. They’ll say you’re my reason for staying on in England.’
He shrugged. He was uneasy of saying anything in reply, being uncertain just what he thought as yet.
‘Anyway,’ she went on easily, slipping a gold credit card onto the bill and back into the waiter’s hand before he even noticed what she was doing, ‘I couldn’t come this afternoon, even if I wanted to, because I’ve got a fitting at Tobit Hart’s. Quite a coup, don’t you think, wearing a gown by the boy who’s dressed the divas
and
the Princess.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said.
‘Well take it from one who knows; it’s a coup. Poor boy.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with him.’
‘The usual,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, he’s up and about and working, but he’s several stone lighter than his photograph in September’s
Vogue
and nobody diets that successfully. That must be why he’s designed your costumes for nothing.’
‘You think dying makes people charitable?’
‘No, my sweet, but I think it can make them superstitious. Have a few thousand dollars’ worth of frocks, God, and spare me for another year or two. Do you pray, Teddy?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never did. You?’
‘No time,’ she said. ‘I tried chanting for a bit but it did nothing for me. I’ve been to synagogue a few times since I’ve been back here, though, and I love it.’
‘But you’re not Jewish.’