Golden Hour (21 page)

“He won't talk,” says his trainer. “They'll make it seem like he's talking. But he can move his mouth.”

She makes a little clicking sound with her tongue. Billy looks at her and silently opens and closes his mouth. Cas is delighted, but the little demonstration makes Alan feel sad. Billy is a mature, serious dog. He shouldn't be made to perform in this way.

Billy lowers his head once more and rests it on the ground. Alan, watching his every move, feels that he understands him. If this is what it takes to make a living for me and my trainer, the dog is thinking, then I'll do it and I'll do it well. Just don't ask me to take any of it seriously.

“What does he have to say for the film?” says Cas.

“Oh, he has pages and pages,” says the trainer with a laugh. “Some of it's quite rude. And he has to say that line Michael Douglas said. ‘Greed is good.' That'll be an odd one.”

“He says ‘Greed is good'?” says Alan.

Flora now joins them, panting and pink in the face.

“Hey, Alan,” she says. “I see you've met Rockefeller.”

“He's called Billy really,” says Cas. “Rocky's who he's acting.”

“My son Caspar,” says Alan.

Flora shakes Cas's hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Caspar.” Then to Alan, “Jane asked me to see if there's any way I can help you. You should have called ahead to see what was happening. We're not having much luck with the light, so I'm afraid it could be very boring for you.”

“Oh, we don't mind, do we, Cas? I might just say hi to Ray before we wander off.”

He looks across toward the director, who is now studying a script alongside the curly-headed young man.

“I'll tell him you're here. He'll come over when he can.”

Flora goes to the group round the camera. Cas wants to see Billy do more tricks. The trainer obligingly makes the dog shake a paw. Alan moves away, not wanting to watch. There are two crew men standing smoking, watching the movements of the flock of sheep. The sheep have spread out over the flank of the hill and are grazing.

“If you was a sheep,” says one crew man to the other, “all you'd be doing all day is eating.”

“Eating and shitting,” says the other crew man.

“Not a bad life.”

Alan joins them, nodding over toward the group by the camera.

“Not a lot happening,” he says.

“No light,” says one of the crew men.

“Not going to be any light neither,” says the other, looking at the sky in an expert sort of way.

Alan sees Flora talking now to Ray Stirling and the curly-headed young man.

“You see Flora over there?” he says.

“Yes,” says the crew man with a grin. “I see Flora. I see Flora any time I get the chance. Don't you, Mal?”

“I do,” says Mal.

“You see she's talking to Ray? Who's the other guy with them?”

“The other guy? The little American guy?”

“I don't know if he's American,” says Alan.

“I know who he is,” says Mal.

He fumbles in his satchel and pulls out a copy of the script.

“There it is.” On the cover page it says: Screenplay by Harlan Rosen. “He's the writer.”

Alan feels the blood drain from his head, leaving him dizzy and his vision blurred. Here on the top of the hill, with the grassy slopes rolling down to the sea, he has become untethered, no longer part of the familiar world. He thinks perhaps he'll float away, up through the layer of cloud that hinders the filming, out into the cool clear sunlight above. But of course he can't. He must stay here on earth, with his son.

He makes his way back to Cas and the dog.

“Billy's amazing, Dad,” says Cas. “Listen to this. I hold up my fingers.” Cas holds up two fingers. “How many fingers, Billy?”

Billy gives two short soft barks. The barks are muffled by his beard, as if he's a little ashamed of them.

“There's not going to be any filming,” says Alan. “We might as well go.”

“No filming?” says the trainer. “Are you sure?”

“No light,” says Alan.

“Can we come back when they're filming, Dad?” says Cas.

“Maybe,” says Alan. “Bye, Billy.” A nod for the trainer.

They head back down the turd-ridden track, moving faster than when they came.

“Can we have a dog, Dad?”

“Maybe.”

“I could train him, like Billy. That would be so cool.”

Flora catches up with them, panting and pink-faced as ever.

“Are you going?” she says. “I'm really sorry if you've had a wasted journey. Call me next time and I'll make sure there's something happening.”

Alan says nothing.

“So did you like Rockefeller, Caspar?” says Flora.

“He's so cool,” says Cas. “He can actually count.”

“You wait till you see what he can do in the film.”

“Is he rude?”

“Yes, he is sometimes.” She looks toward Alan, who says nothing. “I don't think he knows what the rude words mean, though.”

“What rude words does he say?”

“Oh, you know. The usual ones.”

“Does he say shit?”

“I think he probably does.”

“I keep treading in it,” says Cas. “It's impossible not to. Why do the sheep only do it on the path?”

“I don't know,” says Flora, looking again toward Alan.

When they reach the concrete road at the bottom Alan says to Flora, “So who's Harlan Rosen?”

Flora has the decency to blush, which makes her look even prettier.

“The studio insisted,” she says. “Just a final punch-up.”

“A what?”

“You know. A quick pass for the director.”

“Ray agreed to this?”

“It was more Nancy in LA. It was a condition of the green light.”

Alan is heading for his car, wanting to be gone. There's a big crowd round the catering van now.

“Am I allowed to see the changes?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay, I'd like that. Email me the latest draft.” He unlocks his car. “Hop in, Cas.”

Cas can tell from his tone that something has gone wrong, so he does as he's told without a murmur. Alan gets in, starts the engine.

“It's nothing, Alan,” Flora is saying. “Superficial stuff.”

They drive out of the car park and onto the road back toward Seaford.

“What happened, Dad?” says Cas.

“They've got another writer in to change my script,” says Alan.

“But it's yours, Dad. They can't do that.”

“Well, you know, Cas,” says Alan, trying to sound wryly amused by the ways of the film world, “it's not, and they can.”

“But you wrote it.”

“I wrote it. They paid me. They own it.”

When they get to High-and-Over on the way back Cas doesn't go Woo-oo! As they crest the hill and see laid out before them the great green land, a land carved and formed by people, its every smallest track tramped by people, its every house sheltering people, Alan can see only the disappointment that follows all human endeavor repeated in every home, in every car, multiplied into the far distance. The vista laid out before him is a whole world of hurt, if only we could tune our senses to the wavelength of pain.

Down into the valley. Down into the trees. Down into the shadows where real life is lived in all its grubby littleness.

I could walk away from it all. I should walk away from it all. But then what? Back to teaching? That'll never pay the mortgage on the new house.

How did this happen? How did I end up leading a life that makes me hate myself?

One of the lines he wrote for Rocky passes through his mind, making him smile even as he wants to cry.

“Life's a bitch, but you know what? Bitches have their uses.”

Through the kitchen window, Laura can see Carrie sitting on the low wall of the terrace, talking with Toby Clore. Toby is lying on his back on the teak outdoor table, his hands behind his head. Carrie looks animated and laughs and moves her hands about in the air. Toby's arrival has transformed her. This should make Laura happy. She and Henry have been worried recently by Carrie. She's been so withdrawn and silent. Is she depressed? And if so, why? Is it their fault? It has to be, but Laura doesn't know what she's done wrong, and why it's become so hard, so impossible, to have a conversation with Carrie. People say, Oh, she's a teenager, they go through these moody phases. But why?

Was I like that when I was her age?

With a shock Laura realizes she was more or less exactly Carrie's age when she fell in love. Her boyfriend back then had been all in all to her, she has no memory of her own family at the time, only of Nick. The time she spent with him was filled by her love for him, and the rest of the time was spent waiting for him.

Is Carrie in love with Toby?

It looks very like it. Silently Laura pleads with Carrie to be careful. He'll walk away from you. He'll break your heart. But how can she say this to Carrie? And why should she say it? Loving and losing is all part of growing up.

I loved and I lost and I was wounded for years and years. Was that part of growing up? How much pain is valuable? When does it turn to plain old damage?

Laura doesn't trust Toby and she doesn't like him. Just as her own mother, she recalls suddenly, didn't like Nick. But that was different. Nick was an intellectual snob, he made Mummy feel stupid. And maybe there was something else too. Mummy could see how he treated me, how he resented my need of him, and she concluded he didn't really love me. Which you could say turned out to be both true and not true.

Did I laugh with Nick the way Carrie's laughing now? Most likely I did. Forever looking toward him to test his response to me, then looking away to conceal, or fail to conceal, my helpless obsession.

She can't see Toby's face or hear what he says, or if indeed he speaks at all. He just lies there and accepts Carrie's devotion as his right. Oh yes, he's attractive, there's no denying that. Not so much his appearance, which is too skinny and too hairy for her taste, but his eyes, which look at you with a scary intensity, and the things he says. There's no predicting which way he'll go on anything. If you disagree with him he simply changes his mind. He seems not to care about presenting a formed self to the world. This has the odd effect of making everyone else want to gain his approval. Because he doesn't seem to care how he's judged, we all submit ourselves to his judgment.

Such a boy as this will let Carrie adore him and then vanish, without trace and without guilt. Already Laura hates him for it.

She has another reason for hating Toby Clore. He mocked her for planning her dinner party. He proposed that she do nothing at all.
The guests come, you all sit down at the table, there's nothing to eat.
This image has haunted Laura ever since. Of course
it's absurd, just his jokey manner, but behind it lies a criticism of her entire way of being that is a little too close to a secret fear of her own: that she leads an unworthy life. That the concerns that fill her day are not of any lasting value.

Fuck him. He's nothing but a spoiled kid from a screwed-up family. What's he ever done that makes him so great? He's living the life of a parasite, easy for him to lie about grinning at everyone, acting as if other people's efforts to make their lives work are some kind of joke.

A sudden thought enters Laura's head. Toby thinks he's Jesus. He's got the long hair and the beard and the radical philosophy. Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory and so forth. There always was something flaky about all that take-no-thought-for-the-morrow stuff. Who wants to be a lily in a field? Equating Toby with Jesus does not have the effect of elevating Toby in her eyes. It reminds her of a long-held secret, that she has always found the teachings of Jesus annoying. They sound so right, but you just can't live them in your actual life. They don't fit. So you go round feeling permanently inadequate, and of course, guilty. Give all you have to the poor. Well, no. Love your enemy. Then he's not my enemy, is he? Blessed are the meek. No, the meek are a drag and a pain. The whole thing only works if you believe this world is some sort of short-lived test chamber for the real thing that's coming after death. Sure, if we're all about to die and wake up in eternity, I'll take no thought for the morrow. But if I don't die and I wake up tomorrow right here and I've made no plans, then what do we eat?

And what do I do about a hat?

This hat business is of course comical and she's ready to laugh about it, but when she's done laughing the problem remains.

She must wear something on her head at the royal garden party. Why this should be so she has no idea. That's the sort of question that interests Henry, the curious conjunction of historical hangover, social etiquette, and marking of status boundaries that is called tradition. For Laura the matter is entirely practical. A solution must be found.

She ponders the option of going shopping for a hat and rejects it. She resents the time and the cost. This is not a gathering of people she knows. The Queen won't be singling her out to compare outfits. Strictly speaking, what she will wear on Thursday has no importance at all. But not to wear a hat will be to make a statement that she is not willing to make, that she is openly rejecting the reigning convention. This mild form of rebellion would be charming if she were Carrie's age. At her age it strikes her as graceless. If she really doesn't want to be part of the circus why join the parade?

There's always the option of the “fascinator.” The name alone is enough to make Laura wince, implying as it does a simpering and desperate attempt to attract attention. But there are perhaps ways of carrying it off. After all it's no more than a modern variant of the flower in the hair.