Voices in an Empty Room (20 page)

Long after she had left the school and had made a name for herself, she met this actor in a television studio, when she was playing the lead and he merely a walk-on two. He had come up to her, truculently drunk and had said, ‘My, you have got on since those days when you used to gaze at me with those beautiful sheep's eyes of yours!' He had disturbed her; but she was by now adept at concealing disturbance and so she smiled at him and said, ‘How nice to see you again.' ‘Is it?' Then a terrible thing happened. He sank into the chair opposite to her, put a hand, its palm strangely flushed, to his forehead, and began to emit one gulping, gasping sob after another. Fortunately no one was near enough to notice.

‘What is it?' she asked.

For a long time he did not answer, his shoulders heaving and those gulping, gasping sobs going on and on, while she took in the shabbiness of his suit, the crack over the instep of the shoe on his left foot and the unshaven area around the curve of his jaw. Then he said, in a voice thick with hatred, ‘You have everything, I have nothing.'

She stared at him with a cold detachment, wondering, Why doesn't this upset me, why doesn't it move me?

He took his hand away from his eyes and she saw, with disgust, that some greenish snot was caking one of his nostrils. ‘I've lost it all,' he said. ‘My memory, my job at the school, my marriage, my house, my nerve.' My nerve. She remembered that. That was the all-important thing.

She got to her feet. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘ I really am sorry.'

As she walked away, he shouted after her, ‘ Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!'

Whenever it was physically possible on a Sunday, she would make the journey, however long, tedious and expensive, down to Devon to see her son. He would always be waiting for her, standing at the attic window, high up in the steeply sloping roof of the farmhouse, of the little room which was his. As she walked or was driven up the drive, Lavinia got into the habit of looking up there. She would wave, as soon as she could make out his face, and he would wave back. Then he would rush down the narrow stairs, so that, at the sound, Lettice would look up from her pastry or her potato-scraping or her bean-stringing and shake her head in mingled sorrow and annoyance. Arms extended, he would rush out crying ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!'

While he was still a small child, Lavinia would then sweep him up into her arms and he would hang round her neck, his cheek pressed to hers, as he breathed in that smell, exotic and potent, which he associated only with her. Once, when he was four, he found an empty bottle of that scent in the waste-paper basket of the room that she used. He removed it, carried it up to his room, which was next to the room of the Danish au pair who helped both in the house and with looking after him, and hid it among his toys. From time to time, when he was alone, he would take it out, unscrew its stopper and hold it to his nostrils. Then, slowly the scent thinned, faded, became a mere ghost. He buried the bottle in the garden, under a lanky lilac tree which never produced more than a few weak blooms.

Often, in those early years, he would say to her, ‘Why do you have to go away again? Why? Why?'

‘Because I must earn money for us both.'

‘Let me come with you,' he would also say; and she would then have to explain that she was living in lodgings, going on a British Council tour to the Middle East, was out all day and late into the evening and so could not possibly look after him. She would also often tell him that a city or a town was no place for a child. He was much better off here, in the countryside with his Aunt Lettice and his Uncle Frank and Inge.

There were holidays, of course, between one job and another; and then she would come down to fetch him or Lettice would bring him to London. His hair cut and brushed, in the grey flannel suit that Lavinia had bought for him at Harrod's, he would look touchingly solemn and adult. She would drive him, in the MG sports car acquired after a part in an American him, up north to Scotiand or west into Cornwall or even across the Channel. He was always taciturn – ‘rather a boring little boy', one of Lavinia's friends commented to another, not knowing that Lavinia could hear her. He would sit in the car, glancing now at the road ahead and now up at the face of the woman beside him. When Lavinia asked him what he wanted to do, he never seemed to know. ‘Oh, what you want,' he would answer. Then patiently he would follow her round country houses, picture galleries and churches; would laugh when she laughed, in cinemas and theatres, and look tense or sorrowful when she looked tense or sorrowful; would eat the same meals that she ate and even sip some of the same wine.

When he was a little over eight, a strange and disconcerting thing happened. They had been up to Edinburgh for the Festival and though Lavinia had taken the boy along to what an aunt of hers, resident in the suburbs of the city, regarded as the most unsuitable places for a child – the Festival Club, the Traverse Theatre, the Howtowdie – he had, in his still, silent way, clearly been happy. Then, as they approached the village outside which Lettice and Frank had their farmhouse, Lavinia had noticed that he was looking less and less at the road ahead of them and more and more up at her face. She began to feel troubled by his scrutiny and eventually she asked, ‘What is it, darling? Have I a smut on my nose?' He did not answer. ‘Stephen!'

Then he said, in a constricted, grieving voice, which she would always remember, ‘Please, Mummy, don't take me away again. Ever.'

‘What do you mean? Haven't you enjoyed yourself? Oh, darling!'

He now stared straight ahead of him; and that narrow, paleface, so like his father's, under the blackest of hair, was immobile.

‘Haven't you, darling?' she repeated.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes, of course I have. That's it, you see, Mummy. It's coming back.'

‘But aren't you happy with Aunt Lettice and Uncle Frank?' Lavinia was amazed. They were so patient and kind with the boy, even though he was so unresponsive to Lettice's love and so unlike the son, extrovert and athletic, whom Frank would have wanted.

He did not answer, merely twisting his long, delicate fingers over the model train that he had been holding in his lap.

‘Aren't you?'

‘Oh, yes, Mummy. Yes. But it's … coming back.'

However, when Lavinia had next said, half-expecting him to refuse, ‘Darling, I've a week between plays in June, would you like to come to Athens with me?' he nodded and exclaimed ‘Oh, yes, Mummy!' as though he had totally forgotten that plea of his. But Lavinia had not forgotten it; she was never to do so.

From time to time she would agonize to friends of hers – Did they think that she should try to make a home for him? Should she abandon her acting? Was she behaving badly, irresponsibly? – and they would then always give her the reassurance that, however unconsciously, she was seeking from them. It was far better that he should grow up in the country, with a man to act as father to him. No, of course she must not give up her career, that would be criminal – particularly as the money that she earned provided his support. Badly, irresponsibly – why, she'd devoted her whole life, endlessly sacrificed herself, to give him everything any child could possibly want or need.

When he was nine, Lavinia paid for him to go to a boarding school, even though Lettice and she had repeated acrimonious and even tearful arguments about that. Lettice, fearing that his departure for the boarding school would be the beginning of a departure for ever, reminded Lavinia how much they two had hated boarding school. ‘It's so old fashioned to inflict that kind of separation on a child. Particularly one so sensitive.' She went on to speak of the excellence of the local day school, concluding, ‘Why waste money? You work endlessly to give him everything he needs. But this is something he doesn't need, it's only something which you want for him. God knows why!'

There was far more unspoken than spoken in the tussle between the two women, as there had been in that previous tussle over Stephen's surname.

The boy mentioned the surname to Lavinia as she drove him over to the school for his first term. ‘What will they call me?' he suddenly asked.

‘What do you mean? Christian name or surname? I imagine that nowadays both boys and teachers use Christian names. But when your aunt and I went to school, even we, girls, called each other by our surnames.'

‘I meant – am I to be Stephen Trent?'

‘Well, of course!' She laughed uneasily. ‘What else?'

‘But it'll seem odd. Because people will know – since you're so famous – that I haven't got a father.'

‘Oh, I don't think they'll give the matter a moment's thought. Would you prefer to have Aunt Lettice's and Uncle Frank's name and be Stephen Cobbold?'

‘No.' He did not seem to be sure.

‘You could, if you wanted.'

Her acquiescence caused him a terrible anguish. ‘Oh, no!' he cried out. ‘No!' Then he asked a question that he had never before put either to her or to anyone else, ‘Why did my father go away?'

‘Well, as I've told you, he was from India. And I suppose he wanted to go back there.'

‘Don't you ever hear from him?'

‘No.' The truth.

‘Don't you want to hear from him?'

‘No.' A lie.

The headmaster, who might himself have still been at school, so young did he look in his neatly pressed grey flannels and blazer with the crest of a minor Oxford college on its breast pocket, looked away self-consciously, as he always did, when tearful mothers said goodbye to their embarrassed children.

But Lavinia was not tearful as she stooped to kiss Stephen, ‘Goodbye, darling. Be good, be happy.'

He fulfilled the first of these two prescriptions, causing no one any trouble, as he moved, self-possessed and taciturn, between classroom, playing fields, chapel, study, dormitory. But whether he was happy, no one, least of all Lavinia – who made a point of visiting him on every parents' day, even though Lettice insisted that, if her sister was too busy, she and Frank could run over – could ever be certain. ‘Rather a boring little boy.' Other people said it. ‘So withdrawn.' They said that too.

‘Darling, you
are
happy here?'

‘Oh, yes.' He spoke it listlessly, on his face an expression of vague irritation.

‘Sure?'

‘Yes, Mummy. Yes.'

He would spend part of his holidays with her, accompanying her to adult parties at which he would solemnly hand round the canapes or stroke the family cat or dog; reading comics for long hours by himself; and in a small, unused room which she set aside for him in her flat, working at the carpentry for which she had bought him some expensive tools. He made her a rickety bookcase one holiday and a square box, unpainted and unvarnished, for which she could find no possible use, the next.

On the farm, he never made any attempt to help Frank, however hard-pressed he and his two workers might find themselves; but he would often sit in the kitchen watching Lettice and the au pair girl – a Japanese had now replaced the Dane – going about their tasks. That silent, intense scrutiny would worry both the women. They found that, under it, they tended to drop things, to fail at the simple task of separating the yolk from the white of an egg, and to let pans overboil or burn. ‘Haven't you anything to do?' Lettice would ask him, in mounting irritation, and he would reply, ‘Not really.' Once she said, ‘Isn't there any school friend whom you'd like to ask to stay?' and again he replied, ‘Not really.' He had no close friends at school.

His reports were lukewarm – he was ‘diligent', he ‘made progress', he was ‘ learning to express himself clearly on paper' – but never unfavourable, except for games (‘could show more enthusiasm'). There was no doubt that he would pass into the famous public school for which Lavinia had long since put him down.

Then, when he was twelve, Lavinia received a telephone call just as she was about to set off for an important rehearsal at the Old Vic. It was the headmaster and he told her, in a grave voice, totally unlike his usual jolly, hectoring one, that he thought it would be a good idea if she could get over to the school as soon as possible. ‘It's your son,' he explained. ‘Something – er – rather unfortunate has happened.'

‘You mean he's ill?'

‘No.' He seemed uncertain. ‘He's injured himself, injured himself slightly, while playing a silly game. We've put him in the sick bay, where he can be under matron's eye. But, no, he's not ill. No.'

‘But you'd like me to …?'

‘Well, yes, it might be a good idea if you came down – someone came down – so that we could talk it all over.'

When she heard that Stephen was neither ill nor, as she had assumed for a brief, terrible moment, dead, Lavinia felt the sort of relief that is the nearest that many people ever come to joy. She explained that she had a rehearsal, a very important rehearsal, that morning, which she could not possibly miss. She even made a little joke, ‘ You see, Mr Harrison, it's not only the show, but the rehearsal, that must go on in the theatre.' She would snatch the first train, just as soon as she could.

At the end of the rehearsal the director wanted to take her out to luncheon to discuss with her the ‘ attitude' – otherwise, the insolence – of the up-and-coming young actor playing opposite to her. But she kissed him on the forehead, stooping over the bentwood chair on which he was sitting back to front, and explained that her boy had been taken ill and she must go down to his school to see how he was. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?' he said, thinking of his production, not of Stephen, and she answered, ‘Oh, no, darling! Back tomorrow!'

Saying, ‘I think you'd better see for yourself,' the headmaster took her to the sick bay, a bare, rectangular room, painted sunshine yellow, with a washbasin in one corner and a high iron bedstead, a chamber-pot visible beneath it, against its further wall. ‘ Stephen has been rather silly,' the headmaster said benignly, smiling down at the pale, narrow-shouldered boy who gazed up at them with moistly shiny eyes surrounded by dark rings. Only then did Lavinia realize with a shock that Stephen was wearing a bandage round his neck.