Fallout (37 page)

The Depot had less luck. The Denton play had been neglected in deference to
Diversion
’s planned big opening. It needed work and Denton lived up to and beyond his reputation for collaboration. He invited other writers to contribute, throwing agents and contracts into disarray. It was a big moment for him, his third full-length play, and insecurity led him to distrust the directors Paul and Maggie offered, while those he wanted to work with were busy or out of the country. Paul and Maggie’s philosophy for the Depot was set in stone; they were a writers’ theatre and couldn’t pull rank on him and overrule, however sorely they were tempted.

The play,
Hierarchy of Angels
, a fierce dissection of corrupted socialism in Eastern Europe, was being built and cobbled together with brilliance but not with ease, and the theatre itself was scarcely having better fortunes. The building was beset by problems; damp-proof courses that failed, botched electrics that needed re-doing. They had used to joke about the theatre not being ready but now the laughter had stopped. They were two weeks into rehearsals, the play was advertised, posters up and the box office open for business; their first night was in less than a fortnight and they still had no final draft of the script and no seats in the auditorium.

Paul and Maggie’s days and nights bled into one another with no respite from tension but one another’s company and belief in the place they had imagined so many months before.

Leigh offered to leave her job at the Duke of York’s and come in to help but Paul wouldn’t have it.

‘We need your income – and one of us has to stay sane at least,’ he said.

‘
Fucking
Luke. Fucking, fucking, fucking Luke.’

It had become Leigh’s reaction to every piece of bad news and there were enough of those to feed her rage indefinitely.

Beyond the anger, she found strange joy in his having betrayed them. Despite herself she had believed in him, but he was unfaithful – not just to girls, to friends too, everyone – and didn’t care what he did to people. She cut him from her heart with equal pain and pleasure, and refused to grieve the loss. She closed the place inside herself where he had lived and waited for it to scar-over, and be gone.

Nina and Luke’s days merged into one as well, but theirs in ignorance and blind pleasure. They walked into the village to buy food and Nina’s cigarettes and went to the village pub for lunches and suppers sometimes, the other people there were like extras, the rustics in their love comedy. The landlord knew Nina, and that she was ‘in show business’, and they didn’t mind the stares they drew from people they would never know or be beholden to. Luke always had whatever pie they were serving, because he loved it even though it was inferior southern pie, but Nina had the soup if there was any and bemoaned the lack of salad as they sat at their table near the leaded window.

‘We should make a vegetable garden,’ she said. ‘You still haven’t written me that poem.’

‘I’m working on it.’

‘You didn’t bring your typewriter.’

‘I forgot it.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, jealous as she was, even of the thing he did not have, but once had loved.

‘I have nothing to write,’ said Luke and quickly looked down at his plate. She saw that he was frightened.

They had no books either, apart from the few at Trapps. No paper, no pens except to write cheques at the pub. When Luke said he didn’t miss those things at all she was almost taken in. She had all his focus when they were together, he was intent only on her, but once, from the open cottage door, she saw him standing on the grass. He was on his way somewhere, but stopped and did not know that she was watching him.

‘Luke.’

Turning, ‘There you are,’ he said. And smiled as if it had been she he was looking for, but it had not.

He crossed the grass and leaned against the wall next to her. The fading sun was on his face, hers looking up at him from shadow. They were close together but she did not feel it.

‘What are you, if you don’t write?’ she asked. The unwanted question coming fully formed.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what are you without it?’

‘I’m not without it.’

‘But you’re not writing,’ she said, not wanting to go on, not able to stop.

He frowned. ‘I will.’

‘What if you don’t? What if because of me you don’t?’

‘Are you the artist’s curse?’ he said, teasing, ‘The anti-muse?’

‘I might be,’ she said. ‘For you.’

He looked at her and she looked back. She saw what she had never seen in him before. Darkness. Doubt. So easily she had turned the two of them to something bad. She thought it must be a knack she had, to do that.

‘I want to inspire you.’ She said, bereft.

He smiled at her then, as if she were the most innocent thing on earth.

‘It doesn’t really work like that,’ he said, and kissed her. She remembered, suddenly, as they kissed, the first sight of him at her birthday party. How complete he was before he knew her. How happy he had seemed, and sure.

The date of
Diversion
’s first night crept up day by day, not spoken of. Its presence was a shadow. The day of the opening, he was very quiet and Nina, nervous, dared offer,

‘You should go . . .’

But he shook his head. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like, to miss it, she did not want to know. The next day he walked to the village alone while she was sleeping and when he came back he just said, ‘Saw the papers. It seems to have gone off all right.’

‘Really?’ she said, as happily as she could.

He flashed a smile back; young, delighted, another sharp reminder of the Luke she did not own.

‘I told you – you can go up if you want,’ she said, hearing the grudge in her voice that she could not hide.

‘No. It really doesn’t matter.’

And nothing more was said.

They made love in the deep, soft mattress that had no springs in it and in the fields in the sunshine on damp grass. May had become June and they hadn’t noticed, but for the long blue twilights and the singing birds. The hours of darkness were few. Their love-making was at first fuelled by escape, and the particular passion it produced, but then Nina wanted – and he gladly gave it – sex that was fast and sudden, hard, then harder, quickly forced. Not for her his offered hours of closeness, the slow examining wonder. She did not like the length and hours of pleasure that he did, but more the spark of something other that he felt she searched for but could not voice.

In bed, in darkness, once, she held her arms up high above her head and knotted her hands together as if restricted. She was passive beneath him, a mute object for his invasion. He wanted only to please her, and held her that way, bound, while he did it to her, he wanted nothing other than to free her.

Then the dark, the moon, the whispering trees were all around them in the quiet that followed, just outside the open window.

‘I’ll have to go back to London,’ she said.

‘What for?’

They could not see one another.

‘I ought to get more pills.’

He could not think what she meant for a moment.

‘Birth control,’ she prompted.

‘Oh. There must be a chemist – a doctor we could find,’ he said. ‘When will they run out?’

‘They’re finished.’

Her period, he remembered, had ended days before. The blood hadn’t stopped their sex. He didn’t care for politeness and didn’t want to be neat. He had loved the mineral taste, loved the mess, the bright proof of her. But that was nearly a week—

‘So we’re being dangerous, then?’ he said.

‘A little.’

‘Shall I be careful?’

‘I suppose.’ There was a long pause. And then she said, ‘Or . . .’ And she turned over and away from the warm place of them together and onto her front.

He ran the flat of his hand down her spine, moved his hand up to her hair, and gathered it in a gentle fist. Her voice came out of darkness.

‘Do it like this,’ she said.

The sound of her asking for him was delight; he turned and covered her with his body. She shivered and pressed upwards. He kissed the back of her neck and then – again – she put her arms above her head and held them together, out of reach, raising herself to him.

Hard for her and loving, he opened up her legs with his and began to enter her—

‘No,’ she said, a whisper hidden in the pillow, and he put his head down close to hear her say, close and frightened, ‘the other way.’

Still he didn’t know.

‘Hurt me,’ she said.

‘Hurt me.’

Luke felt a halting, stopping fear that mixed with his need for her – but did not stop it. He reached up and took both her knotted, twisted hands in his one and held them. He eased the tight fingers from one another as if untying her.

He didn’t do as she had asked. Freeing her, he moved deeper into her. But then – her hands did not relax into his, they pulled away. She yanked her hips down and off him, cold, away; rejecting.

‘Do it,’ she said fiercely. ‘Please.’

She lifted herself up beneath him. He waited. Aching. Suspicious. He would do it if she wanted it, but—

‘Is that what he does to you?’ he said.

Her body stiffened.

‘This is what he does,’ said Luke. Sickened sadness.

And she began to cry – hoarsely. He moved off and turned her – fought her reluctantly until she faced him – pulling her close to him; heart to truthful heart of what he felt. But Nina cringed in his arms, and hid from him.

‘I like it,’ she cried. ‘I think I like it when he does. I’m used to it.’

He held her closely but he could not say anything else.

Slowly, she pushed herself away. They lay facing. She saw just his outline, the suggestion of his features. He could not speak. He was failed.

‘It’s too late,’ she said.

They lay in their spoiled bed, and waited.

There was no morning, none to recognise. The sun rose and lit the day, but like a mortal thing the love between them had tipped over and decayed.

‘Let’s leave today,’ she said.

He tried to find words – he who could always find words. He wanted to make her promises, tell her he could save her, and wouldn’t give up, but he couldn’t find any faith to offer. He only felt alone.

‘Don’t you want me?’ he said at last, like a child.

All her weakness called out to him, but she found beyond it – just this once and gratefully – something better.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don't want you. You’d better take me back.’

An image came into her mind’s eye, glossy and complete, of a counter and a till, some spoiled purchase held in gloved female hands, to be returned with the receipt; forgotten and replaced.

They packed up the car and left that afternoon.

On Holland Park Avenue he turned the Triumph into the side of the road beneath the dusty summer trees and stopped.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

They looked at the blank future, the impossibility of the doors she had closed, that he had closed with her.

‘I’m not going to my mother’s,’ she said harshly.

‘Stay in my flat. I’ll work something out,’ said Luke.

‘That’s mad.’

‘What else will you do?’

‘Well, you can’t be there.’

‘
I know that
– I’ll take you to my flat,’ he was resolute, ‘and you’ll have time to think.’

They held one another, leaning across the gearbox; parked on the yellow line at lunchtime in their anomalous distress. Luke gripped her hands in his with his head bowed, murmuring close to her neck, her ear, like somebody praying.

‘Please, please, let’s try, we’ll make it better, don’t do this, please stay, please let me try.’

She didn’t move.

‘We have to say goodbye,’ she said.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can’ she said, ‘because you need to.’

And tears. And aching loss. Defeat.

He drove her to Bayswater, unpacked her things and saw her up, and left her there. He drove away thinking of nothing else but that he was leaving her, turned into the park and then with nowhere to go, he stopped.

He switched off the engine. It ticked gratefully into silence, it seemed to sigh, and rest. She could have the flat. Whatever she needed she could have, it didn’t matter. He stayed sitting there in the romantic, foolish car and watched the children playing around him, and searched for some truth to salvage from the wreck that he had made.

Nina and he. It had seemed so clear, so familiar; as if the path were chosen just for them by fate. He had brought the sword of stupid love; St George to slay the dragon and save the maiden, but he had failed. He had lost himself and everything he loved, gracelessly, to the mirage of salvation. The vision had evaporated. There wasn’t anything. She was not that maiden; he was not that saint. She did not want to be saved.

And Nina sat on the floor in Luke’s flat and cried and thought it was the only heroic thing she had ever done or was ever likely to do, not to go after him, and take him back, and ruin him.

Paul and Maggie had a party for the Depot in an Italian restaurant near to the theatre.

Paul was too busy so Leigh organised it – the guest list, the menu – and Maggie paid from her personal account, not the Depot’s, which might not see a profit for years. They weren’t gloomy about it. They felt triumphant; up and running, legitimate.

Maggie and Leigh were in the restaurant early, sharing a bottle of wine and talking plays and profiteroles.

‘You do
everything
,’ said Maggie. ‘You’ve kept him in stew and clean shirts for months as it is.’

‘We’re not like that,’ said Leigh.

‘Aren’t you?’ Maggie smiled. ‘I’ve said that before.’

The waiters stuck candles in bottles around them, clattering and shouts came from the kitchen like a discordant opera behind.

‘You know how it’s been,’ said Leigh.

‘God, yes,’ said Maggie.

Given
how it had been
, the party was a riot of relief and celebration. They all drank too much. Denton, the director and cast of
Hierarchy
, the architect, the contractors, Paul’s family, old friends and new; backers and backstage crew, stars and stage management and Maggie’s daughter, Helen, traipsing round with friends between the tables.