Voices in an Empty Room (16 page)

‘Of course, of course,' Henry says, as though this fact had momentarily slipped his memory.

Mrs Lockit eventually arrives with a tray. There is nothing on it except a number of small tumblers, bought from Woolworth's, half-full of sweet sherry. Sybil takes one, aware that this dark, baleful woman, whom she has never liked, is staring down at her with a peculiar, squinting intensity. ‘And how are you keeping, madam?' Mrs Lockit asks. She never calls people sir or madam except at these parties.

‘Oh, fine, thank you, fine.' Sybil sips at her glass. Mrs Lockit remains there, almost as though she expected Sybil to drain her glass and then replace it on the tray. ‘And you?'

‘Mustn't complain,' Mrs Lockit says and at last moves, on.

‘Strange woman,' Mrs Hanrahan murmurs.

Eventually Major Hanrahan arrives, to remind his wife that they will have to get going if they're not to be late for the theatre. ‘Pinter,' he says. ‘God knows what I'll make of it. My stomach always chooses to rumble in one of those pauses.' His wife tells him, ‘That's because you're thinking of your dinner, instead of the play.'

Sybil is now alone. Dreadful people, she thinks, as she always tends to do when not with her cronies. She drains what is left of the sherry, places the glass on top of a pile of ancient copies of
Blackwood's Magazine
, and wanders out of the room, down the corridor and out into the garden. Mrs Lockit, shaking some potato crisps out of a packet into a bowl in the kitchen, watches her pass and, for a. brief moment, seeing something of Hugo in those fine, aristocratic features, that tilt of the head and that upright carriage, she feels a sudden pang of remorse. But that soon passes. After all, he got what was coming to him, he had only himself to blame.

Though Henry, panama hat on head, often potters around in it, the garden is dishevelled. The grass between the beds is speckled white with daisies and the beds themselves are thick with weeds between the lanky stems of roses seldom pruned. At the far end, grass forcing itself up between the flagstones, there is a paved area, under a tattered weeping willow. The table and four chairs set out on it look as if they were made of wrought-iron painted white; but in fact they are made of plastic. An elegant woman of about forty, her hair prematurely grey, is seated alone on one of the chairs, hands folded in her lap, while she gazes out before her. She does not seem either to hear or to see Sybil approaching.

‘May I join you? It's so hot and crowded in there.'

‘Please.'

Sybil is sure that she has met this woman somewhere before. A former colleague? A former pupil? Or can she have been at one of Henry's parties in the past? Except that her nose is too wide and short, almost coarse in its modelling, she is extraordinarily beautiful. She is also dressed with an elegance which, of all the women guests, only Sybil herself can rival.

Sybil sits facing the woman. The woman looks, not at her, but out at the garden, as she was doing when Sybil approached. But there is no constraint between them.

Eventually Sybil says, ‘Have you known Henry long?'

‘Henry? I hardly know him at all. But I've lived in the other half of this house in Codrington Villas, for, oh, five or six years.… Semi-detached acquaintances, that would describe us. We call this the Village, you know.' Sybil knew this and had always thought it a silly affectation. ‘We each give a Village party, at least once a year. This is Henry's.'

‘I expect that at the other Village parties one can get something other than cheap sherry to drink,' Sybil says maliciously.

‘Usually. Yes.'

‘I feel sure we've met each other somewhere.'

‘Have we? People often think they've met actors somewhere. What that means is that they've met them on the stage or in cinemas or on their television screens.'

‘You're an actress?'

The woman nods. ‘Was. That's more accurate. And you?'

‘I teach. I'm headmistress of a school.'

‘You don't look like a headmistress.'

‘Don't I?'

The woman laughs. ‘Far too elegant.'

‘Anyway you look like an actress. I should have guessed. You're much the most elegant woman here.'

‘Thank you.' The woman inclines her head, with the dismissive easiness of someone used to being complimented.

Sybil looks closely at her. Then she says ‘You're Lavinia Trent, of course.'

‘Why of course?'

‘Well, you're so famous.' The woman is silent, as though. musing on that. ‘My brother reviewed your Hedda Gabler in the
TLS
. He said it was the finest he had ever seen. You may remember.'

The woman shakes her head. ‘It's strange. I seem to remember only my bad reviews. Anyway, it was kind of your brother. Is he here today?'

‘No. He's dead.'

The woman looks down at the ring, a diamond set in sapphires, on. her wedding finger, above a band of platinum. She turns it one way, then the other.

Sybil says, ‘He died here in Brighton. An accident. Seven months ago.'

‘How strange. My son died here in Brighton seven months ago. Exactly seven months.' She looks up into the willow tree, its branches trembling around them. In a low voice (‘ I'm burning your child,' Sybil can hear her say on the stage of the Old Vic), she murmurs, ‘Oh that we could have some two hours converse with the dead.'

Sybil feels first a shock of amazement and then one of pleasure. She has repeatedly said that line to herself since Hugo's going. ‘Yes, if only.'

‘I've tried', Lavinia says. ‘How I've tried. But …' She shrugs.

‘I've tried too. I go on trying.'

The woman turns the ring, one way, then the other, as though it held some magic. ‘How do you try?' she asks. ‘Tell me.'

‘Oh, you'll only laugh. People always do. But I – I do this automatic writing. Sometimes I think – sometimes I believe … But there's nothing, oh, nothing conclusive.'

The woman nods.

‘And you?' Sybil asks.

The woman laughs. ‘Well, last week, a friend, a young actor, took me to this man, a friend of his, who does this – this psychometry.' The woman looks at Sybil, as though she expects her not to know what psychometry means. Sybil nods. The woman goes on; she tells the story.

The young actor, who played Tesman to her Hedda, told her about this man, a perfectly ordinary little man, who worked behind a counter at Barker's during the day and who, in the evenings, would give sittings to people. He lived with his wife, whom Lavinia never saw, and three children, whom she did not see either but whom she heard, rampaging in a room above them, in a semi-detached house in Putney. He had a little, wispy beard, which looked as if it had been stuck on to his chin, large hands and feet, and narrow, sloping shoulders. He spoke with such softness, in a monotonous, nasal voice, that it was often difficult, what with the noise overhead, to catch everything that he was saying. She gave him a scarf which had been her last present to her son and he had placed it over his bony knees and had then run his hands over it. with a slow, smoothing gesture. ‘I see a theatre,' he said after a while, in a hesitant, puzzled voice, and she had not replied, ‘Well, yes, I'm an actress' or even nodded, because she and the young actor had agreed that in no way would either of them betray anything. But she was not greatly impressed. No doubt, like Sybil now, he had recognized her and therefore had not been taken in by her assumed name. ‘A theatre. The curtain is rising. An actress. And a famous writer.' That had given her a jolt, because in the past, well, there had been this famous writer and eventually she had married him, though the marriage had not lasted. ‘ Lovers.' The hands continued to stroke the scarf, with those long, slow, smoothing gestures and she found herself now looking not at him but at them. He began to speak of constant quarrels between the actress and the writer – and that too had amazed her, because she and that man, whom eventually she had married, had quarrelled incessantly. The actress was ill, dangerously ill, and while she was in – what? a hospital? a sanatorium? – the writer, who had written a play for her, gave the leading role in it to another, younger actress and that actress became his mistress. Now Lavinia was bewildered, because she was as strong as a horse, she had never really been ill in her life, certainly not dangerously ill, and though her former husband had written some plays, some pretty dreadful plays for her, he had never, during their life together, given the leading role in any of them to a rival. The man began to falter, as though he sensed that, having at first won her over to belief, he had now lost her. He began to fold the scarf, picking up either tasselled end in the palms of his hands and flipping them over and then making another, similar fold and another. He held it out to her. ‘I'm afraid I can't do any more. I'm tired.' He looked at his watch and gave a smile, ‘And my wife and kids will be wanting their supper.' The young actor who had brought her had already told her that the charge was ten pounds and she had the money ready, not in her bag, but in an envelope in the pocket of her jacket. She drew it out and leaned forward. The man took it from her, with no word of thanks and placed it on an occasional table beside him. Then he gave her a wan smile. ‘ I don't know if that was any good,' he said and, not wanting to disappoint him, though she herself, having hoped to hear something of her son, was disappointed, she replied, ‘ Well, part of it was right. A major part of it,' she added, though that was not strictly true.

‘Oh, I'm glad' – and clearly he was.

She and the young actor walked in silence down the path to the gate and the young actor opened the gate for her, with a mock bow, and they emerged on to the dim, suburban street. ‘Strange,' the actor said, taking her by the arm in that casual intimacy which, among stage people, has so little meaning. ‘ Strange?' she echoed. ‘That scarf might have been mine,' he said. She asked him what he meant. Then he explained that, at that moment, he was writing his first play and the play was about d‘Annunzio and Duse. ‘Everything he said was not about you and Keith –' Keith was her former husband ‘– but about d'Annunzio and Duse. They were lovers, she had tuberculosis, he wrote a part for her in
Jorio's Daughter
– the part of a lifetime, and then he gave it to someone else, someone younger, whom he seduced.'

The women now look at each other. ‘Then he got something,' Sybil says.

‘Yes, he got something. But that's what is so infuriating. People get something, all the time they keep getting something. But the something is not what one wants. It's all so incalculable and uncontrollable.'

‘ESP,' Sybil says. ‘ He got it out of the mind of your friend, not from the scarf.'

Lavinia nods. ‘Precisely.'

Sybil says on an impulse, ‘Shall I take you to Mrs Roberts?'

‘Who is she?'

Sybil is amazed that someone should never have heard of this famous medium. She explains.

Lavinia says, ‘Why not? It's worth a try. I'm prepared to try anything – in the state in which I find myself. Shall I give you my address?'

Sybil gets an address book out of her bag and Lavinia opens her own bag and takes out of it what looks like a miniature book of tickets.

She tears out one of the tickets and sticks it into the address book which Sybil has opened for her. That done, she smiles at Sybil. ‘I'm glad I met you. Otherwise, it would have been an even more boring party than usual.' Sybil nods. ‘I'm glad I met you. My brother was a great friend of Henry's. I could never understand it.'

‘Perhaps Henry has qualities invisible to us.'

‘Perhaps. Or my brother may have liked him for his absence of qualities. He sometimes did that with people.'

‘So did my son.' Lavinia looks at the Cartier watch, beautiful but impractical with its absence of numerals, which she wears on a gold filigree bracelet. ‘Gracious! Henry hates one to overstay one's welcome. He always puts six to seven-thirty on his invitations and after seven-thirty Lucy begins to collect the glasses.'

‘Lucy?'

‘Mrs Lockit. It's a little Village joke. I think I started it.' She gets to her feet. ‘Then you'll be in touch?'

‘Yes. As soon as I've got on to Mrs Roberts. She's always busy.'

‘And makes a lot of money.'

Sybil nods. ‘ But I don't think money is important to her.'

‘I always envy people for whom money's not important. It must make life so much easier for them.'

They laugh. Then Lavinia wanders off, her bag under her arm. Sybil sits on, glad of their conversation and of the late evening sunlight filtering down through the willow tree on to the shoddy table before her.

Eventually, Henry comes out. ‘Thank God,' he says. ‘The last of them have gone. Those vulgar people next door – not Lavinia Trent, the ones on the other side – stuck it out to the last. It's always the moot guests who are the first to come and the last to go. Have you noticed that?' He takes the chair in which Lavinia has been sitting, stretching his legs out to show woollen socks rumpled about his thin, blue-veined ankles, and plunging his hands deep into his trouser pockets. ‘The amount people drink! Each year they seem to get through more and more. I was afraid we'd run out. I was determined not to produce any of my Dos Palmas for a party. In fact, I had to restrain Mrs L from opening a bottle.'

Sybil says, ‘I liked Lavinia Trent.'

‘Yes. Poor woman.' Henry stoops, retrieves a cigarette-end from under the table and, at first at a loss how to dispose of it, eventually puts it in a pocket. ‘Mind you, she never seemed to show any particular interest in that good-for-nothing son of hers until he was dead. Now, of course, she's gone into retirement. Which is sad. Fine actress.'

‘Probably our best.'

‘Oh, do you think so? I wouldn't have said that. Though I don't go to the theatre all that much nowadays. Kitchen sink.' Sybil restrains herself from telling him that the kitchen sink was dismantled years ago. He fiddles with the ravelled end of his old Wykehamist tie. ‘All right for you if we have a bite at about eight? That'll give the invaluable Mrs Lockit time to clear up.'