Daniel Martin (6 page)

He was leaning on his elbow, watching me in the darkness.

I said, It already is tomorrow. I’m still here.

He kissed my hand.

Okay, then just one more speech. I’ve been in love often enough in my life to know the symptoms. As opposed to the lay-the-broad ones. But love is a sickness of my generation. Not yours. I don’t expect you at any point to catch it from me.

Is that a request or a prediction?

Both.

And that was it. We went to bed. We didn’t sleep. There’s something about one’s own bed, most belonging there. And the way he held me. And thinking about what he’d said, and how it hadn’t needed saying, it was almost insulting because it really meant I might just be a broad who went in for one-night stands and then that I was too young and shallow and Irish to understand love. It was square, anyway. But it also said he was less cool, or more vulnerable, than I believed. And something wicked: Daddyo wants me. All his years, his women. Till suddenly I wanted, and truly to say yes, and turned to tell him.

(To be continued. It’s 1.30, I’m mad.)

The Door

‘Daniel? It’s Nell.’

‘Who?’

‘Your onetime wife.’

His arm drops from Jenny’s shoulders.

‘Caro?’

‘She’s fine.’ A hesitation. ‘I’m sorry for this god-awful hour. We can’t work out the time-change.’

‘I’m still up. It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m ringing about Anthony, Dan.’

‘Oh God. Is it all over?’

‘No, it’s… as a matter of fact I’m with Jane. In Oxford. She wants to speak to you.’ He says nothing. ‘Are you there?’

‘Just temporarily speechless.’

‘She’ll explain. Here she is.’

He glances at Jenny, then puts his free hand to his head like a pistol. She stares at him a moment, not laughing now, then looks down and turns away towards the centre of the room.

Dan?

‘Jane.’

A strange mixture in his voice: both warmth and offence, and above all incredulity. There is a tiny pause on the line.

‘I feel awful disturbing you like this. So out of the blue.’ A longer pause. She says, ‘Can you hear me?’

‘It’s just that yours was the last voice in the world. ‘

‘I’m sorry. It was so kind of you to send that message via Caro.’

‘I’m only sorry it’s had to be so long.’

He expects a response to that; but she is silent again. He is trapped in two pasts, an immediate, still in that room, and a very remote; between two things he fears, emotion and unreason.

‘How is he?’

‘He’s in hospital now. Here in Oxford.’

‘It’s such foul luck for you all.’

‘We’ve learnt to accept it.’

Again there is a silence, and he seeks frantically for a reason why this should be sprung on him.

‘Is there some treatment over here you want me to ‘I’m afraid it’s beyond that. No one can do anything now.’ Another hiatus. ‘Dan, I’ve been trying to gather courage all week to ring you. I don’t quite know how to say this, after all that’s happened.’ Again she holds back, then plunges. ‘He wants to see you before he dies.’

‘To see me!’

‘I’m afraid so. Rather desperately.’ She adds, ‘He’s very ill. But quite clearheaded.’

He feels like a man whose foot finds an abyss instead of a pavement.

‘But Jane, with all the sympathy in the world, I mean, all that’s so… ‘ Now he is the one who seeks refuge in silence. He makes his voice less demanding of escape. ‘You two were right, for God’s sake. I’ve long forgiven you both completely. Do tell him that.’ When she doesn’t answer he says, ‘This is what it’s about?’

‘Yes… partly.’

‘You know. With all my heart. Total absolution. As far as I’m concerned.’

‘He particularly asked me to say it’s… unfinished business.’

‘But my dear, I… I mean… Well, can’t you just tell him? He can take it as read.’

‘It’s not a whim, Dan. I wouldn’t be troubling you otherwise.’

And she waits; as she always would, once a question was posed, a demand stated. Her pressures were always more those of silence than speech.

‘Can I give him a ring?’

And then complete silence. He says ‘Hallo?’; then again. Then he hears the first voice, Nell’s, sheathed and neutral.

‘It’s me again.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing… she can’t talk for a moment.’

‘Nell, what the hell am I supposed to do? I’ve just offered to ring the hospital.’

‘He wants the living presence, I’m afraid.’

‘But why, for God’s sake?’

‘I don’t really know. Only that he apparently talks of nothing else.’

‘I asked Caro to say if I could do anything, before I left.’

‘I know. I suppose it’s something to do with dying.’ He feels her searching for a reasonableness. “We’ve tried to explain it’s very difficult for you. But he’s become obsessed by it. I saw him only yesterday evening. It’s not just Jane.’

‘I don’t understand why I couldn’t have been given some warning.’

‘Jane’s been lying to him. He’s under the impression that she’s been trying to get in touch with you. But she didn’t want to involve you. I’ve only just come in on all this myself. I’m the one who’s finally forced her to do something about it. We’ve been arguing most of the night. You’d better blame me.’

‘How long have they given him?’

‘Not very long. It’s not only the dying. How long he can talk coherently.’ She added, ‘I understood from Caro that you’d finished with the current film.’

‘More or less. It’s not that.’

‘Oh yes. There was a photo of her in the Express the other day. Congratulations.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’

She says evenly, ‘If you think it’s been easy for Jane and me to watch’

‘I’m not wholly devoid of imagination, Nell. Now for fuck’s sake pack it in.’

His voice has something rare in it: a rawness. A silence. Then as if satisfied, the old weapon once again proven good, she retreats into simplicity.

‘I’m sorry. We’re not blackmailing. Just begging.’

‘It’s all such ancient history now.’

‘Not for Anthony.’ She added, ‘But it’s totally up to you.’

He wavers, calculates, stares out at downtown Los Angeles six or seven miles away; feels strangely frightened, as if the reflection in the glass is his own accusing ghost; like an empiricist threatened with supernatural pattern, though he thinks not of doors, but of traps, returns out of freedom, the digging-up of corpses; of more than one death.

‘Is Jane still there? Can I speak to her?’

‘Wait… yes, all right. Here she is.’

‘Dan, I’m sorry. We’re both in a rather overwrought state.’

‘All right, Jane. I understand. Now listen. Cast your mind back a thousand years. Do you remember a day when you threw a full champagne bottle into a river? And you said, when I asked you why, I can’t remember the exact words, but something like, It felt right. Do you remember that?’

‘Just.’

‘Then forget all these years of silence between us. All the anger. The betrayal. And give me one more equally inspired total judgment. Would it feel wrong if I didn’t come? Do you want me to come?’

‘I haven’t the right to say, Dan.’

‘Not unless I ask. Which I just have.’ He adds, ‘I’m between films. I was coming home soon.’

And he waits, he sees, already, as he sometimes does at the very early stages of a new script, permutations, forks, openings to exploit.

‘Anthony would be eternally grateful. If that doesn’t sound too silly.’

‘And you?’

At last she says, ‘Please. If you possibly can.’

‘An there’s very little time?’

No.

The decision is on him, almost before he knows it is there, and he feels the image is from seeing, not experience like a surfer, suddenly caught on the crest, and hurled forward. It is both a moment of will, as if, like the surfer, he was waiting for this; and simultaneously one of abandonment… no sooner willed than transferring will to the wave.

‘Okay. This call’s costing you the earth, so listen. Tell Anthony I’m on my way. Give him my every sympathy. And just put on Nell for one moment more, will you?’

‘I sometimes think I ought to have thrown myself instead of the bottle.’

‘I shall demand an explanation of that when we meet.’

There is silence, the last. Then she says, ‘I don’t know what to say, Dan. Forgive me.’

Then it is Nell again.

‘I’ll try and get a flight tomorrow. Just warn Caro I’m coming back, will you?’

‘I’ll telephone her this evening.’

Thanks.

And he puts down the receiver, meanly, before she can find a tone of voice for whatever repentance or gratitude she too feels. Then he stares into the lit plains of the California night, seeing Oxford, a grey winter morning, five thousand miles away. From somewhere down below there rises the neurotic switching wail of a patrol-car siren. Without turning, he says, ‘Two fingers, Jenny. Straight, please.’

He stares at the glass when she silently brings it, then up into her eyes with a wry smile.

‘And fuck your great-grandmother.’

She holds his eyes, probing. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My erstwhile brother-in-law wants to see me.’

‘But I thought… the one with cancer?’

He swallows half the whisky. He stares down at the glass. He looks up at her, then down again. ‘We were very close once, Jenny. I’ve never really talked to you about all that.’

‘You told me they’d excommunicated you.’

He turns away from her eyes, looks out again over the endless city. ‘He was my best friend at Oxford. We were a… sort of quartet. The two sisters. He and I.’ He gives her a diffident grimace, searching her reaction. ‘Ghosts.’

‘But… ‘ she lets expostulation trail away. ‘You’re going?’

‘It seems there’s not much time left.’ She stares at him, and her eyes show two kinds of hurt honesty, both a childlike and an adult. If he tells her a lie then, it is also partly to himself. ‘It’s Caro, Jenny. We’ve torn her apart for so long. I can’t refuse the olive-branch now it’s offered.’

‘Why does he want to see you so much?’

‘God knows.’

‘But you must have some idea.’

He lets out a breath.

‘He’s a professional philosopher as well as a Catholic. They do rather live in a world of their own.’ He reaches and takes her hand, but again looks out into the night. ‘His wife’s someone special. Very meticulous over personal relationships. Very scrupulous. She wouldn’t have broken so many years of silence without… ‘ but he doesn’t finish.

She withdraws her hand and turns away. He watches her light a cigarette by the couch.

‘Why did it feel right to throw a full champagne bottle into a river?’

‘It was just her way once of suggesting we’d all been living in a false paradise at Oxford.’ He goes on a shade too quickly. ‘All very involved. I’ll tell you one day.’

‘You don’t have to defend it. I just wondered.’

But she avoids his eyes.

He says, ‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘A breather.’

‘I didn’t realize it was a race.’ She picks up an ashtray and empties it unnecessarily into a wastepaper basket. ‘You won’t come back?’

‘They only want you for three weeks more. With any luck.’

She leaves a silence. ‘Well. That’ll teach me to make jokes about second sight.’

‘Yes. It was a little uncanny, that.’

She glances at him, accusing.

‘Ask me to marry you again.’

‘I try not to repeat silly mistakes.’

‘Your whole life’s a mistake. You’ve just told me so.’

‘All the more reason for not dragging you into it.’

‘I shouldn’t have said yes.’

‘Then what?’

She bends and plumps a cushion. ‘I think about it. Quite a lot. Much more seriously than you do, I suspect. For all your talk.’

‘Then you should know why it wouldn’t work.’

‘I know the signs are bad. All you say.’ She obstinately arranges cushions, then picks one up to examine some loose braiding. ‘I just wonder if the fact that you won’t trail round after me and I won’t give up everything to darn your socks isn’t really rather a good thing. The best I’m likely to get. Given the squaw bit doesn’t attract me at all. That it wrecked my only other… serious relationship. Would always wreck it with anyone normal my own age.’ She says; ‘I’m trying to be honest.’

‘Then it definitely wouldn’t work, Jenny. The one component such marriages need is a core of dishonesty. I don’t think we two could manage that. In the long run.’

She puts the cushion down. ‘You don’t seem to realize I need you. In so many ways.’