Elegance and Innocence (69 page)

The students are gearing up for their end of term showings. They swarm about, slouching in hallways, drinking takeaway coffees from Carlo’s, the expensive American coffee chain, which opened round the corner a few months ago. They seem impossibly young and at the same time disarmingly confident, strutting about London with ease, on a constant whirl of theatre outings and regular trips to nightclubs. There are so many more of them than in my day; each term hosts at least fifty students and, accordingly, there are fifty instant Polaroids tacked up on the bulletin
board. To them, I’m just a fat, slow-moving adult. Very few of them even know my name.

I spend most of my day unpacking boxes of files, sifting through which ones should be transferred to computer disks and which stored in the archives (a grand way of saying put back into boxes, labelled and shoved into a closet).

In the evenings, I’m studying to teach speech and drama at the Guildhall, and occasionally putting pen to paper when I’m not too exhausted. Life has compacted into a neat little rut of work, study and home to the house in Fulham.

It’s 5.20 on a Tuesday afternoon in February and the sun’s setting. Gwen and Amber are finishing up for the day. I’m putting in some extra time, working on a scene for a masterclass; Boyd’s encouraged me to write something that we can workshop with the students. I’m taking the classic Shakespearean convention of a young woman dressed as a man and experimenting, putting it into modern-day settings, including an exclusive gentlemen’s tailor in Savile Row. Whole hours disappear before I know it, sitting in front of the computer, but no one else in the office seems to mind.

Fiona Richards, the well-known stage actress who’s teaching the general acting class, strides in, looking for an audience. She’s attractive in an eager, overly animated kind of way, with her large brown eyes, short dark hair and lean boyish figure. She takes regular tea breaks while class is still in progress, coming in to regale us with stories of what
new tortures she’s devised for her students on little more than a whim. Grabbing a mug from the shelf, she leans against a filing cabinet. ‘I’ve got them all being cows!’ she announces. ‘It’s just
too
funny!’

Amber looks at her in shock. ‘But that’s horrible!’

She waves her away. ‘Nonsense! Good for their voices! Anyway, they’re all mooing in iambic pentameter – the prologue from
Romeo and Juliet
.’ She can barely contain herself. ‘It’s hysterical! You have to see them. “Moo mouses most malike in Mignity!”’

I catch Gwen’s eye and smile.

‘I’ll make them be babies now! Anyone want to watch?’ And, filling her mug with hot water, she heads back to her mooing charges.

Amber turns to us. ‘She’s mean! You shouldn’t let her.’

But Gwen just shrugs her shoulders. ‘She knows what she’s doing. Maybe she’s a little power crazy. But they all adore her.’

Simon veers in, his wild white hair dancing, weightless, round his head. ‘Gwen! I have an idea! We must open another school in America! Using famous Hollywood actors as teachers! It will be huge! Follow me!’ He zips backs into his office.

Gwen continues to flick through her Rolodex. ‘Here we go. Another plan to rule the world,’ she sighs. ‘And it’s only Tuesday.’

‘Gwen!’ he barks. ‘Gwen, this is important! We’re running out of time!’

She rises reluctantly, pulling herself away from her desk. ‘Now he’s going to have me here all night.’

Amber stands up too. ‘Tea or coffee?’ she offers, switching on the answerphone for the evening.

‘Oh, tea!’ Gwen smiles gratefully. ‘I can’t face Simon without at least another cup of tea! Evie, do you think you could ring the Peacock Theatre and confirm the use of their stage for the 27th and 28th?’

‘Gwen! Gwen!’ He’s sitting in his empty office, shouting. ‘Get me Dustin Hoffman’s telephone number!’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Leave it to me.’

Lowering myself into her chair, I search through her Rolodex for the number while Amber makes two cups of tea for Simon and Gwen. She slips on her coat and picks up her handbag.

‘Night, Evie. See you tomorrow.’

‘Good night,’ I say, watching as she takes the tea into the next room.

These are the moments I love, these rare quiet intervals when there are people around me and yet I’m alone.

In the corner, the fax machine begins spewing pages.

I locate the number I’m looking for and leave a message, making a note of it for Gwen, which I leave on her desk. Then I wash up the used coffee mugs and tidy the kitchen before collecting the fax pages and stapling them together. They’re invariably either for Simon, or Gwen, or occasionally a long letter for a student from an overwrought
parent concerned about the rapid drain of money from their account.

I leaf through them. It’s my name on the front.

Sitting down, I look through the pages. It’s from Robbie, of all people; handwritten in what appears to be a stream-of-consciousness style.

EVIE!

What’s all this I hear about you leaving the RSC?!!! Boyd tells me you’re studying to be a teacher!!!! WHY!!!!

My heart leaps into my throat. She’s the last person I expect to hear from; the last person who would approve of what I’m doing. She dives headlong into a mile-a-minute account of her own life.

I’m thinking of going back to school, there are so many things I have yet to do, I find working in the Chinese Herbalists a REAL DRAIN … they don’t understand me, don’t get creative nature, actually they fired me anyway – said I couldn’t make change but that’s bullshit. I’ve just been a little … I don’t know … lately. So I’m taking some life-drawing classes … actually, I’m the model … my boyfriend … did I tell you I had a boyfriend? I think he’s some sort of underworld drug baron … terribly rich, never says two words, drives around in a black Mercedes with a driver and two huge
security guards … has a divine cock, makes the Empire State look small … I think he’s in love with me … anyway, hates that I pose naked for other men … very possessive … finding it hard to concentrate … Evie … am feeling a bit down … like there are too many things all happening at the same time … do you understand? I thought you might … you were always such a good friend to me … think you really got me … do you remember the House of Chekhov? We will go to Moscow! We will!

    So anyway …

There are three more pages, crammed with writing.

She’s worse.

Much worse.

I’m filled with dread. I want to tear the pages up; I wish I’d never seen them.

Fiona strolls back in, chucks her mug in the sink without washing it up. ‘They’re just angels! Rolling around on their backs, sucking their thumbs! I just adore how malleable they are!’ She stops. ‘Are you all right?’

I fold the pages over, pushing them into my handbag. ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ I say quietly.

She looks at me in amazement; that kind of I’m-playing-to-the-back-row-of-the-Olivier amazement actors specialize in. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘They came here to learn how to act.’ I meet her eye.

‘And I’m teaching them. If you can’t take a little humiliation, then this isn’t the job for you!’ Her voice betrays her bitterness. ‘Besides, most of them will never make it anyway,’ she adds, sauntering over to the door.

I hate the way she speaks about them; as if they were disposable.

‘But they don’t know that! And neither do you!’

She narrows her eyes. ‘I think I do. I’ve been around long enough, Evie, to recognize real talent when I see it. And anyway, it takes more than that. You have to want it’ – her gaze bores into me – ‘more than anything else in the world. The world’s full of would bes, could bes, might bes … how many people do you know who’ll ever be anything more than that?’ And she arches an eyebrow at me, before making her exit.

I shouldn’t have done that; shouldn’t have spoken to her at all. She’s bound to make it into a whole drama and tell Simon … I run my hands over my eyes.

A Chinese herbalist … a receptionist … a teacher … what happened to our dreams?

Fuck it.

I press ‘Delete’. The scene I’ve been working on vanishes into oblivion.

Fuck all of it.

Fiona’s right: the world’s full of ambitious failures, clinging to their delusions. Time to live in the real world. Opening my handbag, I take Robbie’s letter out again.

Why doesn’t she just take her goddamned pills? What am I supposed to do to help her, a thousand miles away?

I tear it into several small pieces and throw it away.

Two days later Robbie leaves a message on the answering machine at work: ‘Evie, I was just wondering if you could give me a ring … I’m … do you think you could ring me?’ Her voice is strange. But, typically, she doesn’t leave a number.

I tell myself I’ll call Boyd to see if he has an up-to-date number.

I tell myself I will, but then I don’t.

I don’t know what to say to her; what to say for myself. And I can’t bear to hear her sounding so crazy. I’ll call her later, when things are different. We’ll have a long chat, laugh about old times.

Besides, it’s not as if either of us is going anywhere.

I’m coming back from the post office, walking along the corridor. The students are having their final run at the Peacock Theatre; the building’s almost empty.

My soft-soled shoes make almost no sound, padding slowly along.

I round the corner. And stop.

A tall figure moves from the shadows into the light.

It’s Boyd. He looks old, lost.

‘There’s been an accident. In New York.’

This is how it begins.

I’m nine and a half months pregnant and throwing up into the sink one morning when, suddenly, I’m standing in a puddle; a lake of warm clear water.

Water, I think to myself.

How odd. Where did it all come from?

Yes, of course!

My waters have broken.

Gwen’s left for work already; she’s meeting students at the airport. I’m alone in the house. So I ring a minicab service; the one that keeps shoving their cards through the front door, then heave myself back upstairs.

I struggle to pull on my clothes. There are only two outfits I wear now, alternating them day after day – the blue pregnant pants with the blue pregnant top and the black pregnant pants with the black pregnant top. Today, the most important of all pregnant days, it’s the black outfit.

And I feel frightened, thrilled, unusual, as I toss my toothbrush into the bag, The Hospital Bag, that’s been standing by my bedroom door, packed and ready to go, for over three months – full of carefully ironed baby clothes and extra large white cotton nightgowns for me and a pair of slippers I’ve been saving for The Hospital.

Is there anything else? Have I forgotten something?

The cab’s on its way and my waters have broken.

It’s happening.

I throw in a book (as if I’ll ever read again). And wrestle
on my coat – the one that just fits over the arms but only just, gaping open ridiculously. Then I go downstairs, lock the door and wait on the front steps in the freezing morning air.

The cab pulls up and the man looks me up and down.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks suspiciously.

‘Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, please,’ I say, smiling, beaming. And then I’m suddenly overcome by another wave of nausea. I purse my lips and concentrate.

This does nothing to convince the cab driver, who can see me fighting off the urge to be sick. He stands in front of the car door, reluctant to let me in. ‘This isn’t an ambulance,’ he informs me half-heartedly; unsure whether if he fights with me now, I might really,
really
go into labour.

I need to open my mouth. I need to respond convincingly, to seem friendly, light-hearted, not quite as desperate as I am, despite the fact that I’m carrying a suitcase, clutching my lower back and fighting the overwhelming desire to vomit, right here in the middle of the street, with every fibre of my being.

But all I can do is moan and flinch.

This isn’t good.

The driver instinctively backs away from me, like I’m going to explode.

The estate agent across the street spots me. He’s the one who, despite having a warm, cosy office all his own, seems to find it necessary to spend most of his days pacing up
and down the pavement, shouting at the top of his lungs into his mobile phone.

‘Hey!’ he stops in mid-shouted conversation. ‘Are you OK?’

I nod my head. ‘I … I need to go to the hospital,’ I gasp. (I don’t care if I’m in labour; I absolutely will not throw up in the street.)

The cab driver holds his hands up. ‘I’m not an ambulance service, man. I’m not taking responsibility for
that
!’

(It’s the destiny of pregnant women to lose their identities; we’re just pods.)

The shouting estate agent’s outraged. ‘I’ll have to call you back.’ He clicks his phone shut. ‘You ignorant cunt!’ he shouts at the cab driver, who I’m certain is never going to take me to the hospital now (here comes another wave; I feel faint, clutching the side of the car to regain my balance). ‘Can’t you see she needs to get to the hospital! She’s in labour, you dumb fuck!’

This isn’t what the cabbie wants to here. He’s shaking his head. Climbing back in the front seat. Shutting the door. ‘You sort it. It’s not my business.’

‘Please!’ I can feel the warm trickle of water down my right leg. But he’s off. The estate agent shouts, running after him down the street and I start to gag against my will.

This too shall pass, I tell myself. Somehow, some way, I’ll get there. This too shall pass.

It’s the shouting estate agent who drives me, like a
scene from some movie, strapped into the front seat of his Range-Rover and sitting on a black plastic bag, just in case. He calls ahead and shouts at the nurses, so that as soon as he drives up, honking his horn in front of Accident and Emergency, one appears with a wheelchair to take me in.

Things are moving faster now.

Fluorescent lights flash above my head as they push me down the hall. Then I’m in a room, the nurse is helping me into a green paper gown. I throw up into the sink, holding the side of the bowl, and behind me the room’s filling. Off comes the giant underwear, apart go my legs, there are an army of faces peering at me, fat and immobile. I’m a tortoise turned on its back. I’m public property. My back’s snapping in two. My hands shake and the waves are coming. They’re strapping the monitors on. And this too shall pass, I tell myself. Somehow, some way, this too shall pass.