Alys, Always (9 page)

‘Financially?’ I ask.

‘Financially, emotionally … you name it.’ She lifts her cup to her lips, blows on the surface, then drinks. ‘We were living in Kilburn at the time. My friend Louisa rents near there now, and it’s quite a nice neighbourhood, but back then it seemed like we were on the absolute edge of civilisation. The Wiltshire grandparents got terribly jumpy when they came to see us. Dealers at the end of the street, fights and burglaries and stuff. And our house: well, the garden was the size of a hankie. It was all very
tiny
. And when Dad was in a temper, the whole street knew about it.

‘But then he wrote the first really successful book, the Sidney Bark one, and everything took off. The Appleby prize, the residency at Princeton, and he started writing screenplays. That was very lucrative. We went out to LA for a while. Swimming pools. Lunch at the Coppolas’. Yada yada yada.’ She uses her fingers and thumb to mime a mouth, as if it’s all incredibly boring, but I can tell she’s in love with this story, she likes telling it, and has done so many times.

‘We moved back when they bought the Highgate house, and then they found the place at Biddenbrooke, so Mum could have her garden. God, that garden! I wonder who will look after it now.’

She puts her elbows on the table and rests her forehead on her hands. Then she straightens up. ‘You’re a good listener, aren’t you, Frances?’ she says, examining me with her disconcertingly pale eyes. There’s a dark ring around the iris, I notice, which makes them seem rather arresting. ‘Lots of people listen, but you really seem to hear what I’m saying.’

I know this really means that I challenge her less than anyone else does; but still, there’s a grain of truth to it. I am a good listener. It’s a dying art. Most people seem to prefer to talk. They compete to be heard, filling the air with chatter;
and for the most part it’s worthless stuff: bad jokes, boasts, excuses. White noise. Hot air.

But just occasionally, if you pay attention, you’ll hear something that might come in useful.

‘Any time,’ I say.

She finishes her coffee. The bowl in front of her is still half full, but I get the feeling she’s not much of a breakfaster. ‘I’d better get going,’ she says, picking up her phone and reaching for her bag, which she has slung over the back of her chair. It’s a silver satchel, very simple, undoubtedly very expensive. ‘Sorry for all that …
venting
.’

‘I mean it, Polly,’ I say, winding the scarf back around my neck. ‘Any time, just give me a shout. Not sure how much use I’ve been to you, though.’

‘Well,’ she says, getting to her feet and stretching a little, like a cat, so her jersey rides up, flashing a strip of skinny hip. ‘I do feel
slightly
calmer. I’m going to think about what you said. Think I’ll leave things as they are for now. Won’t rush into anything. Might go into college on Monday. Worth it just to see the look on Tony Bamber’s face. Sam says we won’t be starting rehearsals until the start of the summer anyway. He’s got a job in New York next week, on a film set. Just as a runner,’ she adds, seeing my expression. ‘His dad knows the director of photography.’ She says that as if it makes things more palatable.

She bends to give me a kiss just as the waitress turns up with the slip of paper on a silver dish. ‘Let me know how it goes,’ I say, and she says she will, and she’s turning on her heel and walking off, weaving precisely between the tables, adjusting her hat as she goes, while I sit there, my hand out for the bill.

After that nothing happens for a while.

Hester and Charlie rent a cottage in a Cornish fishing village for a week in the Easter holidays, and invite me to join them for a few days. It’s incredibly wet and windy; and the boys, who wake up at 6.30 every morning, have streaming colds; and in return for the small single bedroom overlooking the mossy courtyard garden I’m expected to babysit most nights.

Mary asks me to do a few more reviews. I know she’s asking me only because she doesn’t have to pay me extra, but still.

One evening I’ve just stepped into an empty lift when I hear someone calling, ‘Hey, Frances, hold it—’ and though I quickly press the button marked ‘Ground’ for a second time, a foot is inserted between the doors before they close. It’s Tom from Travel. ‘Thanks!’ he says, easing in with a sigh of relief. I give him a stiff little smile and get my phone out of my pocket, wanting to avoid conversation, but he’s oblivious.

‘I hear Culpeper outdid himself in conference today,’ he says chattily. ‘Crawling up Robin’s arse over that China editorial. He never stops talking, does he? Is it a nervousness thing?’

I say I have no idea.

‘Seriously, I hope it isn’t,’ he says, as the lift door opens, ‘because I really don’t want to start feeling sorry for him.’

I can’t help laughing at that, but as we are disgorged into the marble foyer I hang back, getting busy with my coat buttons. Tom, though, is hovering by the revolving doors, waiting for me.

We step out on to the pavement together. ‘Well, ’night, then,’ I say, turning in the direction of the tube station.

‘Are you doing anything?’ he asks, falling into step with me. ‘It’s just that a few of us are going to the Albatross. Fancy a quick half?’

It would be so easy to say no, as I always do. Or rather, as I always used to. Now I think about it, I realise that people have given up asking me to join them for drinks or the cheap set lunch at the Bay Leaf. Maybe it would be good to find out what’s going on.

‘Oh, why not?’ I say, and Tom gives me a surprised grin. He has very good teeth, I notice, and his eyelashes are long and sooty, like a pony’s. ‘Attagirl,’ he says.

We go to the Albatross. Jerry Edgworth is there, and Sol from the picture desk, and Mike the deputy news editor, already glassy-eyed, tearing into the dry-roasted peanuts. Empty green bottles are lined up at his end of the table like skittles. Tom goes off to buy our drinks and I sit down uneasily on one of the upholstered stools, not enjoying the attention as Jerry says, ‘Well, we don’t often see you in here.’

‘Tom twisted my arm,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me regret it.’

Raising a glass to his lips, he snorts faintly, rather dismissively, not wanting to give me the credit for making a joke. Hacks are like that, I’ve noticed. They always want to be the funny ones.

He and Sol and Mike stop pretending to be interested in me and go back to pondering the fate of the business editor, whose drink problem is now common knowledge after he broke away from the press pack and created an unfortunate scene during the prime minister’s trade mission to India. No one seems to know where he is now: possibly a clinic in Surrey, the one where the celebrities go. ‘He’ll have some stories when he gets out,’ says Mike wistfully.

Tom comes back, sliding on to the stool next to mine, pushing my drink over the table towards me. ‘Has Mary let anything slip about the review?’ he asks.

‘Mary never lets anything slip, haven’t you noticed?’ I say, picking up my drink. ‘What are they saying at your end?’

‘Oh, it’s all speculation. No one actually knows anything. But they don’t let that stop them.’

‘It’s all mind games,’ says Jerry. ‘It’s textbook. They’re softening us up, preparing us for the worst, so we’ll all be relieved if it’s not actually that bad after all.’

‘It will be that bad,’ says Sol gloomily. ‘You wait and see.’

Tom turns towards me, blocking the others off. ‘How long have you been on Books, anyway?’ he asks.

I tell him, and he asks where I was before, and so I find myself explaining about the chain of unremarkable events that led me to Mary and her section. He listens attentively, although I can see he’s dipping in and out of the office gossip at the other end of the table: Gemma Coke, Robin, Robin’s wife.

‘What about you?’ I ask.

Tom says the job suits him pretty well, for now at least. It gives him some stability, a regular income, while he works on his screenplay. He has the grace to flush when he mentions it.

As I ask a few more questions, it emerges that he hasn’t actually written it yet. He’s working on an outline, some character sketches, just doing a bit of initial research. ‘That’s the challenge, isn’t it,’ he says, just a little shamefaced. ‘Actually knuckling down and getting the thing on paper. You heard about Parvaneh, didn’t you?’

Parvaneh was in the subs’ pool until she won a new writers’ competition run by the Royal Court. Last I heard, the Weinstein Company had optioned her four-hander. Kate Winslet is interested, apparently.

‘Really, it’s great you’ve got a project you’re working on,’ I say, though I suspect he’ll never get farther than talking about it. ‘You must keep going. You will, won’t you? It’s really very impressive.’

I finish my drink and smile while he blusters a bit – bashfulness and hope fighting it out – and then I gather my things together and call it a day, though I get the impression it’s only just beginning, as far as they’re concerned.

One Friday evening I’m just coming out of the tube, having had supper with Naomi, whom I’ve known since university – a dull evening, as she’s newly married and pregnant, obsessed with nutrition and travel systems; I’m thinking about how I may have to let her go – when my phone beeps to say there’s a voicemail.

I listen to the message as I head up the hill towards my street. It’s Polly. She sounds a little bit drunk and very upset. ‘Where are you?’ she’s wailing. ‘It’s all going wrong. I really need to talk to you. It’s all … well, just ring me when you get this.’

It’s nearly eleven, a mild evening at the beginning of summer, and at the top of my street some kids are milling around outside the takeaway, with cigarettes and bottles of beer; a handful of girls are biting their lips and twisting their heads from side to side, moving to the R’n’B playing tinnily on someone’s phone. In the sodium glow, I notice a toddler in a buggy, a wrap of chips in her lap, looking around with wide dazed eyes.

‘It’s me. Frances,’ I say, when Polly picks up.

‘Where are you?’ she asks, and her voice is tearful, a bit desperate, rather accusatory. ‘Where have you been?’

‘On the tube,’ I say, stopping by the front door to find my keys, and then letting myself into the communal hall. The light bulb has gone again, so I have to fumble to fit my keys into the lock. The door gives, and I step into the flat and start to climb the stairs. ‘I’ve just got home. What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, I can’t explain now,’ she says, as if I’ve said something moronic. ‘It’s just a real mess.’ Then there’s a stifled sound as she puts her hand over the phone. I can hear her voice, muffled, and then someone else is saying something – a man. Then the sound clarifies and sharpens again as she takes her hand away. ‘Yeah, whatever,’ she’s saying, slurring slightly. ‘Fuck off, why don’t you?’

‘Where are you?’ I ask, dropping my bag on the sofa and switching on the table lamp. The usual dispiriting mess springs into view: drifts of old newspapers, the undercoated shelves I never got around to painting, the Rothko print in a clip-frame propped by the radiator. Wedging the phone between my chin and shoulder, I bend down and pick the TV remote and last night’s pasta bowl off the rug.

‘Camden,’ she says. ‘You’re not far from Camden, are you? I’m locked out of the flat in Fulham, and my flatmate’s away, and I don’t want to go back to Dad’s house … not like this.’

So I say if she wants to crash somewhere, she could always come here.

The taxi ticks up the road about fifteen minutes later. I’ve hidden her father’s books and done the washing up and put the papers into the recycling box, and because I’ve opened the windows quite wide – to freshen the place up a little – I hear her getting out, the weighted slam of the cab door followed by the unsteady percussion of her heels as she makes her way to the front door and leans on the bell.

She’s flushed, feverish-looking, with dark artificial shadows under her eyes: evidence of tears or maybe just sweat from the heat of the place where she has spent the evening. She doesn’t meet my gaze when I let her in, just slides past me, the smell of cigarettes in her hair, her ankles tiny above the brute wedge heel of her sandals as she climbs the stairs. ‘Thank God I got hold of you,’ she says as she comes into
the sitting room, lifting the strap of her silver satchel over her head and letting it drop, and falling on to my sofa. The sprawl of her bare legs takes up half the room. She’s wearing a little waisted jacket over a sprigged dress which stops several inches short of her knees.

‘Do you want a glass of water or a cup of tea or something?’ I ask, standing there in the doorway, looking down at her.

‘I’d really like a cold glass of wine,’ she says, her arms outstretched beside her, palms to the ceiling: an attitude of dejection, or supplication. ‘Or a beer. I don’t suppose you’ve got any beer, have you?’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t have any wine either.’

‘Want another drink,’ she says. ‘Just one. Shit night. You know.’

I don’t say anything. I just stand there in the doorway with one hand on my hip. I’m feeling pretty tired, and I’m suddenly wondering what on earth I’m playing at, letting her in here.

My silence must have alerted her to the fact that she’s pushing her luck, because she sits up straight and presses her fingertips to her face, then smoothes the hair off her forehead: it’s a decisive little movement, and it suggests she’s trying to pull herself together. ‘No, you’re right,’ she says. ‘A herbal tea would be good, if you’ve got any. Thanks, Frances.’

I go into the kitchen and fill the kettle.

When I carry the camomile tea through, I see Polly has taken off her shoes and paired them up against the skirting, as a child on best behaviour might. She’s wandering around the room, examining things on the mantelpiece. Picking up the fossil I found at Golden Cap, then replacing it and absently moving on to the scented candle, which she lifts and sniffs automatically. As she runs a nail along the spines of my
books, I know she’s looking to see whether I have any of her father’s novels.

‘It’s all old stuff,’ she says, half-pulling out a copy of
Rebecca
. ‘Don’t you read anything contemporary?’