Daniel Martin (58 page)

Not to conform… whatever the cost, not to conform; and that, obscurely, biologically rather than politically, was what was wrong with Jane’s solution.

The last movement had begun, though Dan had stopped listening to the music except unconsciously… or to anything else. He heard Phoebe’s voice calling: the telephone again. He looked at his watch, thinking it might be the Californian call he had booked, but there was an hour to run before that was due; and when she saw him, Phoebe said it was Mrs Mallory. Downstairs he hesitated, took a breath, then spoke.

‘Hallo, Jane. Home safely?’

‘Yes, Dan. Thank you.’ There was a tiny hesitation. ‘I gather Roz has spoken to you.’

‘She tells me it’s three against one now.’

‘I feel the victim of a cabal.’

‘The beneficiary. Will you come?’

‘Only if you’re absolutely sure you can stand the thought of it.’

‘I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.’

‘You are sure?’

‘It’s a lovely experience. I know you’ll enjoy it.’

‘Then I’d love to come. If I may.’

‘Now I really feel forgiven.’ There was a moment, she said nothing, but he waited.

‘That was granted many years ago, Dan.’

‘Symbolically anyway.’

He went briskly on then, and told her about the next cruise from Luxor, and that he would like to be in Cairo on that day week. She flinched a little at this, as if such long journeys still needed a Victorian thoroughness of preparation. But he assured her all the bookings would be made, that the cruises were very informal, no fancy wardrobe was needed. If she could get up to London on the Monday, they could see about the visas then. He expected further flinching over the cost, but curiously she didn’t ask about that… or perhaps had already checked on it with some local travel agency, and decided she would afford it.

‘You must tell me who to pay.’

‘We can settle all that on Monday. They probably won’t know, it’s all done on account. So don’t worry.’

‘I insist on paying my share.’

‘Of course. We’re going Dutch. It’s the movie business. You always pay later. Literally and metaphorically.’ He sensed, down the line, that she did not like that; she was not even being allowed to pay on the nail for her wickedness. But she did, finally, reveal something more innocent.

‘I feel like a small child being offered a totally unexpected treat. Not quite able to believe it.’

‘There are all those boring old pharaohs. You may hate that.’

‘I must get a book and read it up.’

Dan told her not to buy a guide, he still had the one he had used before in London. They talked a minute more about the arrangements. Then she thanked him again, and for the night’s stay, and rang off.

He went into the living-room and poured himself a small whisky. The die was cast, and very soon he would have to speak to Jenny and take his own decision. He need not tell her yet. But Dan was an old hand at deceiving. The later you left it, the more difficult it became to justify. He stared at the bishop, and began to rehearse.

The booked call came through on time, sooner than he wanted. Jenny was already, though only just, up; and delighted, she hadn’t expected it.

‘I’m so sorry about last night. I won’t do it again.’

‘Swill the bloody stuff down the drain.’

‘Yes I will. I promise.’

‘Where did you get it from?’

‘Just someone at the studio.’

He knew she was lying, he wouldn’t quite say why: simply that in other circumstances he would have pressed to know more about the ‘someone’.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Okay. I’ll get through. Now you’ve rung.’ She added. ‘Perhaps you’d better read what I sent, just to discover what a bitch I am.’

He felt the relief of a chess-player shown at least one clear move ahead.

‘You’re going to feel the same about me in a minute.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got some news, Jenny. I was going to tell you last night, but it seemed hardly the moment. I’m going to Egypt for a few days next week. I’ll be back before you return.’

‘Oh, Dan. You mean thing.’

‘I desperately need some new ideas.’

‘But I thought you said… ‘

‘I’ve had to change my mind. It reads like a history cram course at the moment. It’s getting some atmosphere in.’

‘You can’t delay it?’

‘I wish I could.’

‘I don’t trust you with all those slinky-eyed belly-dancers.’

‘I may be taking a chaperone. If that’s any consolation.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘The great family problem of the moment. Her aunt.’

There was a tiny silence; then an incredulity.

‘Your ex’s sister?’

‘Everyone’s at their wit’s end about what to do with her. She’s got very withdrawn and depressed. I just suggested it out of the blue, God knows why. When she was here. My good deed for the day or something.’

It had plainly set her back. Dan waited. Then her voice returned, guarded sober, yet for some odd reason closer.

‘I thought you were hardly on speaking terms.’

‘It’s all peace and forgiveness at the moment.’

‘And she’s said yes?’

‘We’re all trying to persuade her.’

‘And your ex approves?’

‘Jenny, we’re talking about a rather lost middle-aged woman. Who you’d like and feel sorry for if you knew her. It really is pure charity and… well there is something else.’

“What?’

‘Just Caroline. This ancient vendetta among us all has disturbed her a lot. I suppose I want to show what a decent fellow her father is at heart. In view of all my other sins.’

‘Meaning me.’

‘Among others.’

‘How’s her madness going?’

‘I gather it’s being conducted in Paris this next weekend. No sign of sanity yet.’

‘If only I had a nice traditional gentleman friend like that.’ But she jumped on before he could answer. ‘Do you fancy her?’

‘Passionately. That’s why I’m telling you about it.’

‘Be serious.’

‘I’ve always liked her as a human being. In the days when I knew her well. But not otherwise.’

‘It’s not pure charity then.’

‘You would like her. And feel sorry for her.’

‘That’s what male rats have said ever since time began.’

‘Still true. In this case.’

‘At least I only betray you on paper. I don’t think you’re my Mr Knightley at all.’

‘Never one of my ambitions.’

‘You’re not even trying.’

‘Because you aren’t an Emma.’

‘Soapy water.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘What you wash your hands of things with.’ He said nothing. ‘I think you’re a bastard not at least warning me.’

‘I wanted to last night. It may not happen.’

‘If only I could see your face.’ Then she said, ‘Oh God, now my driver’s knocking. Hang on.’

A few moments later she returned.

‘Dan?’

‘Are you late?’

‘No, but I must go. I’m not dressed. Will you ring tomorrow evening?’

‘Yes of course.’

‘You’re enough to put anyone on the hard stuff. You know that?’

‘That’s California talk. Not you.’

‘She’d just better be as scrupulous over personal relationships as you told me she was.’

‘She’s already raised that problem. And I assured her you were much too intelligent not to trust me.’

‘Tell her that reads better without the “not”.’

‘She’s also a very leftwing lady. With no time for capitalist layabouts like me.’

‘Except when you invite her to Egypt.’

‘I suspect only to try to convert me. If she does come.’ He said, ‘I so wish it was you.’

‘Me what?’

‘Coming. And here now.’

‘I am. By post. I’m rather glad now.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Only because I haven’t anyone else to talk to.’

‘Of course.’

‘You needn’t think I’m going to say goodbye. I’m only hanging on to cost you more money.’

‘I guessed.’

‘How old is she?’

‘In her late forties. And with varicose veins, if you’re interested.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Well then.’

There was a silence, then her ‘small’ voice; a curious flat tone she had used effectively in one or two of her already filmed scenes.

‘I’m gone now.

‘Jenny.’

‘Really gone.’

Still she left a silence, but then the receiver went down. Dan was left staring at The Lord Watches Overall, though with a strong feeling that it was not quite all; certainly not over his skill at the half-truth. Yet, strangely, the hurtness in Jenny’s voice, an uncertainty of tone that was not characteristic of her, had touched him, and helped restore the balance he had lost after the earlier call. A fear, a loneliness, a simplicity, a humanity… something at any rate that remained when one had subtracted the indulgence and the artifice; he foresaw a day when she would meet Jane, and he would be forgiven.

He had remained standing by the telephone, but now, through the living-room doorway, he saw a low shaft of sunlight, entered by the westward windows, on the rush matting that covered the floor. A white wall beyond shone as in a Vermeer interior. Dan went and opened the front door and stood under the porch. The sky was clearing to the south and west, and the setting winter sun had got through for the first time since his return. Torn wisps of dark grey vapour, silhouetted, floated against the limpid yellow upper air. Everything in the combe before him was stained a faint gold, the wet garden, the meadows, the glistening drops on the branches. To the south, over the English Channel, there lay a long soft bank of raincloud, curled at one end, like a fifteen-mile plume, and tinged an exquisite and evanescent dove-grey. All the clouds in that direction held delicate violet and amethystine washes in their billows and folds.

A hidden magpie chattered from the far side of the combe, and there was an angry cawing from a pair of crows. They flew overhead, purposefully, in hue and cry, and Dan walked down the wet paving of the path to where he could turn and look back over the roof of the farmhouse. It was a buzzard, circling high over the beech-wood, the soft light from the opened west catching, as in some gentle, delicate searchlight, the brown and white underside of the bird’s flexed wings. It mewed, majestic, golden, apotheosized, against a dark cloud above. Dan stood and watched till it was chased off, remembering Tsankawi. All his real but unwritten worlds; his past futures, his future pasts.

Written in anger.

There was a change in the Prick when you left. He even pretended quite convincingly to be sorry for me when he heard the next day. He was having a party that evening, if I had nothing better to do he made it clear there would be lots of people, it wasn’t a pass. I didn’t go, or want to. But he behaved better on set, even Bill noticed it. And between takes. He actually said another day it would be great to work together again. Perhaps he was making a bid then, but it was partly meant at face value.

I think I’d better call him by his proper name from now on. Steve, if you remember.

I’ve despised so much in him, but there’s also something I’ve envied the American thing again, I suppose. A kind of ease, a nonchalance, the way he won’t be put down. Even the way he doesn’t take his acting very seriously (behind all the talk). Life’s fun, he’s generally happy, he’s got his girls and his Porsche and his tennis and his body. If I’m honest he relaxes me now as often as he irritates. That thing you never understood about us poor cattle, how we sometimes develop really rather good relationships somewhere between what we’re acting and what we are outside the whole shmeer. Because no one else quite knows what being on camera’s like.

This started happening before you left. I hid it, because I began to see I understood him better than you did (in spite of your foul double-dealing, of which more in a moment), and I know you don’t like that in people. Their understanding better than you. Actually we’ve begun to get it righter and righter since you ratted. He’s not trying so hard to be clever and trying much harder to be natural. The smidgin of edge I like between me and my acting is still there. But it helps now, instead of getting in the way.

I guessed he must have found another girl: and there she was on set one day, this was about four days after you went. And yes, I haven’t mentioned her, either. He introduced us. Her father’s some kind of legal big wheel, drips deals, land, corporations. Offices in San Francisco and New York. Her name is Katherine. Kate. She was sexy, cool, but polite. She’d been in England last summer, and we talked about that. Then Steve said they were going to the new Fellini, if I’d like to come with them… I tried to get a cue from her, I did quite want to see the film, but not if she minded. She didn’t seem to. I thought perhaps he’d told her I was lonely or shy or something. I don’t think it was planned. It may have been. It doesn’t matter now.

We went to his place for drinks first. She knew Abe and Mildred slightly, it turned out her parents live in Bel-Air too. She majored in English and drama at UCLA, but no stage ambitions. She’s known Steve ‘since ever’. They were at high school together. We talked about the picture, Steve was nice about my work. Kate and I talked about drama teaching. We went and saw the Fellini, had a meal. I began to like her better, she seemed to have Steve and his emoting in perspective and we even sided against him in a bantering sort of way a couple of times. She seemed to do him good, too. Sobered him down, as if he knew she knew him too well to risk his cornier lines on politics and acting. They didn’t touch, they might have been married, or brother and sister… the latter, really.

The meal came to an end, I said something about finding a cab, I assumed they’d both be returning to his place. But no, he was driving her home to Bel-Air… and me as well. I still thought they were just being decent. They’d drop me and then go back to his place. But even that was wrong. Her house came first and he took us there. She asked us in for a drink, but I didn’t have to speak. Steve turned it down for both of us—it was midnight, we had to sleep. He got out and kissed her briefly. She bent down at my window and repeated an invitation to come over, go shopping, a drive, any time I was free.

Two minutes later Steve and I were in front of Abe and Mildred’s. I was suspicious by then, and very sure he wasn’t even going to get the chance to refuse an invitation to have a last drink from me. As soon as the car stopped I thanked him for the evening, and made to get out.

He said, Jenny, there’s just one thing. Would you believe me if I said I truly enjoyed this evening?

I said that I’d enjoyed it too. I liked Kate.

I kind of got us off on the wrong foot that first date we had. Right?

I said it didn’t matter. It might even have helped.

I knew I was being English. But it was all unnecessary. It didn’t need spelling out, we’d been working better together for weeks. He was staring down at the wheel. He has angles, that moustache and the hair, a sort of sensitive Jesus look. It was put on, but something made me feel sorry for him. I leant across and pecked the side of the hair, then got out.

I heard him get out as well, as I set off towards the house. I thought for a horrid moment that he was going to come after me. Ridiculous, when you’re scared to give people even an inch.

I looked round, but he was standing there beside the car.

I’ll watch you to the door, he said. Local custom.

Yes, I know Bel-Air is safe, that that also wasn’t really necessary. Phony gallantry. But it made me feel a pig.

The next day, the first time we had to talk, he went back to how nice the evening had been. Kate liked me, he knew she liked me. That was apparently some kind of feather in my cap. I said again that I’d liked her, too.

I had a day off soon after that, while they did some of the odds-and-ends covers and sequences with Steve alone. Perhaps he let her know, anyway Kate rang and asked me over to lunch and suggested we go shopping. I’ve been good about clothes, I felt I’d earned a little binge. Her parents were out. We had a swim and a sunbathe and a salad. We talked a little about Steve. Though there were things she evidently accepted in him because they’re a part of the standard young Cali male (things I couldn’t take, though I didn’t say so) she wasn’t at all dewy-eyed. She said they knew each other too well, they couldn’t ever really make it. ‘Like marriage, a serious commitment. You know what I mean?’

I didn’t really. I supposed she meant they had been to bed, but now were just good friends. Perhaps it was a green light, and she really wanted to know if I was driving in that direction. But she didn’t probe at all. She said she could guess how difficult he was to act with, he had no technique to fall back on if he couldn’t ‘relate’. I said he was fine when he did. It was all very diplomatic.

Their pool’s enormous and the house something. So are some of the paintings on the walls. She showed me round, there was a touch of the bored young aristocrat about her, very casual, not guying it as an English girl in that sort of parental shop would have done. Even rather modest about it, as if I probably lived in a castle a la San Simeon at home and wouldn’t be impressed. I suppose it’s wrong to talk as I did last time about Americans chasing a dream, when some of them have achieved it. Steve told me later that her Irish great-grandfather stood on Ellis Island with a small sack of nothing in his hand. Which makes it more of a fairytale. Her poise is quite something, also.

She took me off shopping, down to a smashing place in Santa Monica. Just my clothes. I enjoyed it much more than I expected, perhaps because the shop knew her and pandered to us. I pretend I despise clothes-buying, and I don’t at all really. I began to like Kate. There were distances, she gushed too much over England and her tourist’s view of it, but one sort of felt one could show her the real England and she’d understand. She has lovely greeny eyes, rather intense. A tan I can only dream about. She’s a year younger than me. A little bit like an Israeli sabra girl. Her mother’s Italian stock (strictly non-Mafia, she says). Rather small, apple cheeks and a boy-girl’s body. Long hair, very dark, almost black. She’s cool and warm, a nice mouth. All this for your benefit. You’d fancy her.

She asked about you, but very tactfully whether you were coming back. I said you weren’t. And we had a general kvetch about relationships with older men. Marriage, working, Lib. There’d been something with one of her UCLA teachers when she was a sophomore, she went into that in some detail and I was probably meant to respond in kind, but I didn’t (all this was at a so-called English tearoom in Santa M.) and it ended in our agreeing there weren’t any rules, the one thing one mustn’t do is fake it, you would like her, Dan, even though she’s a Californian-style poor little rich girl, ten planets away from Europe and its shabbiness and poverty and making do. She’s rather refreshingly apolitical. Doesn’t pretend, but feels as we do about studio shills and the boostering, things like that. The con game the success life is here. I realized it seemed years since I’d talked to another girl I liked, could feel with.

She was so outgoing, articulate about it, being the only daughter (she has two brothers, one’s at Yale and the other’s a lawyer in daddy’s New York office), what’s wrong with the Coast… but all these are lines you can read between.

She drove me home about six. There was some dinner-party her parents were giving and she had to be at. I could have come, her parents were dying to meet me, but it would have been a terrible drag. So another day. I hadn’t been back in the Cabin ten minutes when the phone rang. It was Steve. Ashkenazy was playing downtown. He had two tickets, would I use one? It seemed so spur-of-the-moment on his part, he’d helped me meet Kate and I understood the situation there now (or thought I did) and that I wasn’t two-timing her in any way. I’d bought a dress I wanted to baptize. And the evening to face. A restlessness. The L. A. thing. Shape up or ship out.

Most of all though, you vile rat, it was you. Something that had made me so angry two days earlier. The Topanga interior, Steve’s comeuppance. That worked, Bill was pleased, he took me aside afterwards to say how pleased he was. And I gave Steve his due, after all it’s his scene, and he’d truly given all he knows, and I said something about him doing pretty well for a second choice. Bill gave me a look, I could see he’d forgotten all about that. I said, That’s what you told me. He hit his head. He said, Dan didn’t come clean? All right, perhaps I had to be cosseted and set up at the beginning. But I hated you for days. I couldn’t even bring myself to talk about it on the phone. It’s not an excuse that you’d have told me if I’d ever asked point-blank. If you were honest you had to tell me once it happened between us. I would have understood then. But suddenly it was like your practising all you claim you hate in Hollywood: fool the stupid broad, never mind what lies you tell her as long as she gives a better performance. It threw everything in doubt, you must see that.

So Steve came and I asked him in for a drink before we set off. It was odd, he seemed both shy and curious. To see how I lived, but not to ask about it. The new dress was ‘sensational’. Your blue flowers watched, but said nothing. He was wearing a suit and bob tie, I liked that. It was the first time I’d seen him dressed fairly formally.

I didn’t hear much of the concert, we got there late anyway, and they wouldn’t let us in till there was a break. I was thinking things out, I won’t pretend I wasn’t. I knew it was there. That he probably wouldn’t make a move, but expected me to. That I no longer flinched at the thought of it. That I felt rather like it. That I didn’t want to be involved, and wouldn’t have to be. That I felt frivolous and a little bit in heat. I’d known it beside the swimming-pool that morning with Kate. I’d like to have been there with a man, one of those any-man moods. Instead of dutifully admiring the Utrillos and the Kiecs. Of course for Steve I’d just be a score, something to boast about as soon as I turned my back. Just one more chick he’d been tailgating and could now overtake. But then the hypocrisy of it. We’d been to bed together in front of the camera, simulated it, he’d kissed me hard and it hadn’t always been just for the camera. I’d felt his body a hundred times, and he mine. It didn’t seem very much to see what it was like for real.

That left you. You had begun to seem—but I said it all last time. Bar that final revelation of what a crook you are. You could have flown back here, Dan. If you really wanted me… instead of just my memory. I don’t want to sound too calculated, the thought of you was what kept me not making up my mind at once. If you’d walked into the concert-hall or Perino’s (no expense spared) afterwards, Steve wouldn’t have had a chance. You understand I’m trying to say how I felt that evening (or imagining how I might have felt if there ever had been such an evening, if you want it that way—but will you, she wonders). Let’s call it a test run for the final exorcism: to see if it matters, betraying someone you think you respect. To see if it helps.

And yes, right. I’d been thinking about Steve in bed before that evening.

You may not think it’s necessary to say any more now. But we’ve always been honest, in our fashion. No copyright. It’s a present, alter and add to it as you like. Or tie it in black ribbons and forget.

It was quite funny, actually. I decided that at least he wasn’t going to do the seducing. The inevitable suggestion came that we go to his place and play a few records. Strictly just that, he said. So we get in, and he puts an Indian raga on and fetches me the iced-tea from his kitchen and says he’ll be with me in a moment I watch him go into his bathroom, then I take all my clothes off and lie on his fake leopard-skin couch. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him caught really off-balance. I just watch him, and he nods and nods. For once he really can’t think what to say. He comes closer his hands in his suit-coat pockets, looking absolutely gauche, there’s no other word for it. I sit perched up like the Goya painting and toast him with the glass of iced tea.

I say, As we’ve both got a free day tomorrow. (It was Sunday, we had.)

He says, You’re beautiful.