Fallout (10 page)

‘Shall we go in?’ said Marianne.

Inside, they crossed the marble floor, leaving the vastness of the hotel behind to enter the Grill. It was like stepping back in time; formality that Nina, in her youth – her Equity-minimum adventuring – had never before encountered or desired. She pulled down her miniskirt.

They were greeted by the head waiter, a small man who gave the impression he had been hoping they would come, and was delighted with them.

‘Yes. Tony Moore,’ said Marianne airily, and then, over her shoulder to Nina, ‘He has a regular table.’

The room was crowded, high, square and dark; tablecloths bright white against the panelling and a wall of conversation and laughter that dipped and paused as they entered and everyone, quite subtly, looked up to see who had arrived.

‘Madame . . .’ The waiter gestured across the room and they went with him.

Nina followed her mother like a child, trying not to study the people they passed for well-known faces, suddenly grateful and filled with love for her parent, who was so beautiful, walking carelessly into this secret, celebratory world. The people – men in dark suits, women, some jewelled, some shockingly blasé in their casual modernity against the background – were eating, talking and looking up to watch at the same time, giving the impression of people in a pavement café watching the evening promenade. It reminded her of young delight, some dream of theatre she had never actually known but might never leave her free; pictures she had seen in old magazines as a child of Olivier and Vivien Leigh – he in black tie, she in organza and pearls – dining in that very room. She had lain on her childhood bed at Aunt Mat’s and dreamed, and hoped she might see her mother in the pictures, too. And then she had grown up and realised that of course her mother’s life was very different.

Waiters moved with speed in silence. They had arrived at a corner table.

‘Ah!’ cried Marianne.

She opened her arms wide, her sleeve fluttering across a tray of martinis, kissing the rims of the glasses but not dislodging them. The material swept aside like a curtain, revealing a group of people looking up at her exclamation. The table was round, half-full; the wall behind a severe backdrop to their frivolity. The man facing her, Nina knew immediately, was Tony Moore.

‘Darling,’ he said, and stood up. He embraced her mother, kissed both cheeks, all the time keeping his eyes on Nina.

‘Tony – my daughter, Nina Jacobs,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s her birthday.’

‘Happy birthday, you precious, gorgeous thing,’ said Tony, and took her hand. His fingers did not grip hers, but simply laid over them, briefly. ‘I so loved your work in the Feydeau last year. So fresh. How marvellous you are to come all this way in this ghastly weather. Do you loathe your mother for dragging you?’

Nina felt washed with affection. His approval was a delight to her. She had expected somebody frowsy, with a pipe and thick black glasses – a producer. The ones she had known left snail-trails of cigarette packets and sweet-wrappers. This man was slender, pale-haired, delicate, and yet she was struck by him so strongly, intrigued by his confidence so completely, that she could not speak. He didn’t notice.

‘Darlings – Chrissie, you know Marianne? David? Marianne and Nina Jacobs. Sit, both of you. What will you have? We’re waiting for the Garrick to come out – Honor Lamb and Jerry are coming. We’re dead with boredom. Sit. Sit. Marianne, gorgeous – how Fitzgerald you look.’

The Chrissie he introduced to her she already knew – Chrissie Southey from drama school. Prettiness undimmed. A great deal more hair. Now a starlet.

‘Hello, Nina! I wondered where you had got to!’ she cried in delight and immediately turned away. The man, David, smiled and shook her hand. She didn't recognise him. She felt she should.

A waiter pulled out her chair, surprising her, and Nina had to side-step not to trip on his toes, gauche and blushing.

‘No, no, darling,’ said her mother, quick as a whip. ‘You sit here.’ She gestured the seat next to Tony.

Tony smiled. ‘I’d love it,’ he said, and Nina felt beautiful.

Drinks were ordered. She glanced at him as he talked to her mother. He was younger than Marianne; closer to her own age. He could only be thirty – in his thirties – she turned to look around the room and noticed that people looked away when she caught them watching. She realised, with a halting thrill of power, that the people at the other tables were looking at
her
– not wanting to be caught. It was not she looking at them as it had always been. She noticed suddenly that Tony’s upper arm was resting ever so lightly against hers. There was plenty of space at the table. He didn’t need to be touching her. The feeling of power moved in her like sex – no, she felt the current clearly, it
was
sex – the blood rushed through her. Shocked at herself, she looked with quick guilt towards her mother to see if she had noticed. She had. She was looking at her.

Nina moved her arm away from Tony’s, but then she realised that her mother was smiling. In a tiny movement Marianne raised her glass to her and gave her the warmest – the truly kindest – smile that Nina had ever had from her. She smiled at her daughter with sadness and with love and then she looked away. Nina felt the heat of Tony’s arm once more as it moved towards hers. This evening was different, this was her future.

There was pale-pink and green apple blossom over London; a gleam on the black railings; sunshine over the cracks.

Tony Moore, it transpired, was producing and co-writing a sex-comedy revue called
Wot, Not Married?!
He carried a number of poster-sized sheets under his arm as he led Nina inside, and up the stairs of his Chelsea house.

‘It’s ridiculous, I admit,’ he was saying over his shoulder, ‘and there’s nothing in it for you, you’ll be relieved to hear – unless you want to bare your breasts and brandish a duster?’

Nina laughed but the allusion to nudity didn’t help her nerves; alone in the tall narrow house with Tony, seeing him on a professional footing when two months had passed since their first meeting.

In that time her mother had ceased mentioning him as her ‘friend’ and referred to him simply as Tony. To nobody’s surprise the Iris Murdoch in Cambridge had not transferred. The cast scattered to other projects and Nina and Marianne had returned somewhat gratefully to another temporary stopgap, this one of two years’ standing, a maisonette in Pimlico.

Tony Moore lived just off the King’s Road in a tall, narrow red-brick house he had yet to do up, although his plans for it were ambitious. It was guessed that he may have inherited the house, but nobody knew from whom. Nobody really knew where he came from. He was well-connected but hadn’t started in Footlights or OUDS, he had been something in rep. He had an occasional iconoclastic column in the
Evening Standard
, a sharp tongue and a good nose for talent. He seemed to have a bit of money but he hadn’t had a big hit. All the head waiters knew him and the agents took his calls and he had a regular Sunday-night soirée – he called it that – but the jury was as yet firmly out and sequestered on Tony Moore.

The walls above the chipped dado rail in the hall were painted dark red like raw aged steak. The floorboards were stained a dusty aubergine and covered in rush matting runners. Theatre playbills lined the stairs on both the way up to the drawing room and down into the basement kitchen. They weren’t all his own productions but he’d had something to do with most of them, and if challenged could plead nostalgia. He had also hung, filling up the gaps, posters and prints: Magritte, Gaudi, Lichtenstein, Picasso, so that all in all there was a broad enough palette for anybody.
See anything you like?
the house seemed to say,
let’s talk about it.

Tony had his study on the second floor at the back, looking out at the plane trees and holly bushes of the courtyard gardens. As she reached the top of the stairs Nina, joining him on the landing, glimpsed what she guessed was his bedroom, curtains closed against the day. It seemed she could smell the air breathing from the room, but it wasn’t that, it just had an atmosphere. Perhaps being unlit.

‘Not there,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’ And he gestured the open door to the sunny study.

Nina went in and stood looking out at the mess of windows in the big houses and mansion flats behind.

‘What do we think?’ he asked, and she turned.

He was laying out the posters on the neat desk, weighing down the corners with paperweights and a desk-lighter. They were variations on a theme: a selection of French maids, bananas, exclamation marks, and startled-looking red-faced men in suits – sometimes with their trousers down, sometimes looking up the girls’ skirts – all in a seaside postcard style. The
Wot, Not Married?!
was in a variety of fonts and sizes; hand-drawn, sketchy artwork and rubbings out. Nina stared.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Tony, self-deprecating, ‘but bums on seats, you know.’

‘Bums everywhere,’ she said, and he laughed.

‘Would it disappoint you to know it’s not nearly as risqué as
Oh! Calcutta!
?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, darling, it’s rather cosier. And I’m
not
ashamed to say it also lacks Tynan’s pretension. Broad and bawdy, that’s our motto. The thinnest of plots. My
Not Married
is more Restoration than revolution.’

‘More
Carry
On
than
Country Wife?
’ said Nina and was thrilled to see he was tickled by the allusion.

‘Oh, very good! Yes, it’s
indefensibly
silly,’ he said, ‘and lots of flesh. But Lord knows the world’s grim enough, we need a bit of that. A bit of
the other
.’ He laughed. ‘So sorry. It’s contagious. Sit down.’

Nina sat in the black leather swivel chair by the desk. Tony stood against the wall, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle, his sharp elbow resting on his hand above the shiny steel buckle of his narrow belt.

‘You think I have something in mind for you but I don’t,’ he stated.

Nina wasn’t sure what to say.

‘
Mea culpa
,’ he said. ‘There’s no new play. There’s no Chekhov – however it is you see yourself . . . How
do
you see yourself?’

‘How do you see me?’ she asked, blank. It was her stock response, when challenged – throw the ball back, let the producer, the director, the
man
– juggle it.

Tony blinked, twice, rapidly. His eyes were pale grey. ‘Clever girl,’ he said. ‘Do you worry you’ve missed the boat? Twenty . . . ?’

That hurt; he was as bad as her mother.

‘Three.’

‘Twenty-three. Well into your best years. What about film work?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve done a little. I was cut from
Daytrippers
– I had a scene with Albert Finney—’

‘I’m not interested in that.’ He cut her off.

‘What
are
you interested in?’

‘Talent. Whipping it into shape. Making something intelligent, challenging, big enough to be worth the price of the ticket.’

Nina couldn’t help but glance at the myriad
Wot, Not Married?!
images splashed across the desk. Tony raised his eyebrows.

‘And money.’ He smiled.

‘Money’s nice,’ allowed Nina.

‘Was your mother ever any good? She talks a good career but I’ve a feeling she was rather poor. Walk-ons and fairly tawdry rep. What do you think?’

Nina was shocked; as if Marianne were crouched in the cupboard, under the desk, listening, but at the same time she was delighted – he was so dismissive.

‘Well, she’s . . . I don’t
think
she was,’ she almost whispered and, seeing his eyes gleam, giggled.

‘My God, she’s a tough old bitch, isn’t she?’ he said.

Nina stared, and had to remember to close her mouth.

‘Bet you can’t wait to be shot of her. What would it take?’

This was too far. This was awful. She wanted to run to Marianne and hold her. Was this the world’s view of them both?

‘I’ve shocked you. I’m sorry. I’m very fond of your dear old mum. We had a lot of fun and she’s a knockout to look at, just like you.’

Nina, confused, couldn’t help warming to the praise.

‘Look,’ he said, and he went over to her, leaning on the desk so that his hips – as narrow as hers – were at a level with her eye. ‘When your agent asks about this meeting, Nina, I don’t want you to have anything to hide. Jo’s a mate of mine. She’s not stupid. And I don’t want you to have to lie to your mother.’

He stopped, and stared at her until she was so uncomfortable she couldn’t breathe. He leaned forward, whispering a secret.

‘Nobody knows about me, yet. Nobody knows me at all.’ He was fixing her with intensity, thoughts crossing his face like fast clouds across the sky. ‘My mother was a – I won’t say it again, but maybe she was something like yours. Not physically. God, no. She was a bog-Irish harpy, elbow deep in filth all her life despite turning petit-bourgeois in bloody Bournemouth. My dad was an old soak and wife-beater. He hit us all. Belts. Sticks.’

Nina saw his nerve fail – infant-like sadness, like a toddler who had scraped his knee stopping himself from crying – and she looked away from him so that he could gather himself back. There was a pause, then he said, ‘I know something of you. I don’t want you to think that I want
you
–’ he sat up and waved his hand casually over the posters across the desk ‘– for this. In any way. Understand? I’m here to stay. I think you are, too. I can’t give you a job. Yet. But I can give you a nice juicy steak at San Fred’s – coming?’

He went across the room and, collecting keys from a hook behind the door, checking his wallet, outlined clearly through the fabric of his back pocket.

Nina leapt from her chair, and they went to lunch at San Frediano’s.

Nina was between jobs.
Wot, Not Married?!
was opening in May at the Comedy, and during the last days at the rehearsal rooms in Waterloo, Tony’s struggles with finance, hasty rewrites and then faltering tech runs when they had at last moved in to the theatre itself, she saw him often. She sat by him as he argued with the director in cafés and pubs. She brought him drinks as he scoured angry lines through the script. He hated her to sleep if he was not and relied on her presence and silent acquiescence. She forgot it was just
Not Married
. It became Molière. She argued there was not so much difference between them. But still, it was hard to imagine
Not Married
revived in two hundred years.