Remember Me... (38 page)

In a year or so, she got back to her novel. Soon it became a refuge.
After their daughter had been settled down they would eat supper and then sit for a while in the big battered armchairs either side of the electric fire. Unless there was something they liked on television they would read or, more rarely now, read to each other. They summarised the day, a routine which appealed to Joe at his most organised and was tolerated by an amused Natasha, who saw it as a parody of a bourgeois marriage – a description Joe had at first resented and still felt put down by.

‘Ross says we should get an au pair,' he announced.

‘Ross says . . .' She smiled and put aside her book. ‘Ross says . . .'

‘He is my boss.'

‘He is your current Pole Star.'

‘He's given me chances.'

‘Only because he knows you can take them. It pleases Ross to be a patron. But he wouldn't do it if it didn't reflect well on him.'

‘That's unfair.'

‘He cannot do it for love, Joseph. There must be a reason. Vanity is more accurate. He is very vain. Don't bridle, Joseph! It can be attractive, even in a man.'

‘You're so unfair! Ross McCulloch was a war hero, he did all sorts of things before he came to the BBC, he runs the whole Features Department now as well as the Arts Programme, he knows everybody yet he and Margaret ask us over to their house almost every weekend . . .'

‘We are part of his court. His own children are too young to provide the court he needs. You always laugh at his stories . . .'

‘His stories are great; he ought to write them down.'

‘He never will, writing is a different cast of mind. You are enraptured by his war, even though Sam and his brothers and your grandfather and his brothers all went through wars, probably harder, probably more dramatic.'

‘But Dad won't talk about it. Nor will anyone else.'

‘Except Ross.'

‘He won a medal for bravery, Natasha. Why are you so antagonistic? He likes you.'

‘You should not have told him my background.'

‘He likes you anyway. Margaret has been nothing but kind since the baby.'

‘Margaret is not Ross. She is formidable.'

‘She is a friend, isn't she? Like Claire and Anna. She is one of the Three Graces of Kew.'

‘Sweet Graces.' Natasha's smile too was sweet. ‘I am lucky with those three women.'

‘So, what's wrong with Ross all of a sudden?'

‘Partly that he is a man.'

‘Natasha!'

‘I'll concede that he had no say in the matter. But he is such a Man's Man, Joseph, such an Imperial Man, such a Polite to the Ladies Man, such a Superior Being.
Alors! You
are not a superior being.'

‘He's who he is. Why should he change just because fashions change?'

‘Not fashions, not fashions. It is a truth which has been emerging for generations and that truth is about women. It is an idea based on rational reality and it is the idea that is changing the times.'

‘So we don't get an au pair. Why not? You get tired out. You get exhausted.'

‘What inspires Joseph Richardson from the Blackamoor pub in Wigton to speak so airily about an au pair?'

‘I was not speaking airily.'

‘Don't sulk. I'll tell you. Last week when we went to the McCullochs' and he asked us and the others to bring something to read aloud and you very nervously read that beautiful section from this new novel of yours which is the first one that really works, what did he do?'

‘He was generous.'

‘He was patronising. And then he strolled over to those bookshelves, for all to see he was a Literary Gentleman, and plucked out
Sons and Lovers
and read a passage from Lawrence.'

‘It was terrific. It's as good as anything he wrote. And Ross reads so well.'

‘Why did he do that to you, Joseph?'

‘He did nothing to me. We were all reading something and he read something. That's all.'

‘I fear that you believe that. I don't. He tried to put you in your place. I told him so.'

‘When?'

‘Just before we left.'

‘Told him what?'

‘That he had taken advantage of your willingness to expose something raw and precious and he had tried to crush you, although,' she laughed out loud, ‘it appears that he failed because you didn't notice! Oh, Joseph, I do love you.'

He felt irritated, as if he'd been patted on the head.

‘What did he say?'

‘He said, “You think that, do you?”'

‘That's all?'

‘That's all . . . and then, “Goodnight.”'

Why could he not tell her how much pleasing this man mattered to him? How this pleasing of him was a pleasure because of his admiration for him but also a necessity if he were to retain this miraculous job which not only allowed him to make films but left him with the energy to write? Why could he not tell her that on some days in the office the fear that he might not be in favour with someone notoriously volatile in offering and withdrawing favours spread a panic about him which threatened to excite the violent waves of depression of his adolescence? Why could he not confess all these shameful weaknesses? Why could he not tell her that on some weekends it was impossible for him not to pass by the grand McCulloch house on the river on the off chance of seeing Ross or Margaret or catching sight of their children playing in the big garden and hope to be invited in? And that ‘in' was safety and that this man a generation ahead of him served some inexplicable but desperate purpose? And as she, indisputably, knew so much about people, why did she not know this?

‘What are you thinking?'

‘Nothing.'

‘That is what schoolboys say.'

He dived in.

‘There's a girl in Caldbeck, she lives two doors along from the cottage we rented. You may remember her, very blonde, curly hair, rather small, Mary. When we were up over Easter her mother told me that she wanted to find a place in London because she has a boyfriend in Kent.
This boyfriend, she told me, had been in some sort of reform school near by but Mary had got to know him and she was pining for him, her mother said. So if I knew anybody who would look after her she would let her go because she couldn't bear her looking so unhappy. She's a “good little worker”, her mother said, and “no bother, very quiet”. She couldn't understand how she had got mixed up with a boy in a reform school, a delinquent, she said the word deliberately as if forcing herself to face the worst, but there we are. So Mary could come here.'

‘Joseph! A Cumbrian au pair! Who could possibly resist?'

‘Sometimes . . .' Joe stood up and mocked a threatening strangulation.

The stripper was in bed when Joe knocked at the hotel-room door and she had to repeat ‘Come in' twice before he could summon the nerve to enter. When he did he was confronted by the sort of bedroom he associated with swish rooms in well-heeled films, more an unwalled apartment than a bedroom, the chaise longue, the dressing table as strewn with make-up as was the floor with clothes, mainly, it seemed to Joe at the briefest glance, specialist underwear, the open door to a large bathroom and, dominating the room, a four-poster bed and in the bed, head peeping over lilac sheets like a dormouse, ‘Madeleine'.

‘Over here,' she said in what sounded to Joe like a sultry and suggestive whisper and sent him into a confusion of responses. ‘Sit on the bed,' she commanded, and a white listless arm fringed with blood-red nails patted the spot. He sat.

‘I phoned,' he said. ‘Four times.'

‘The phone's too far away.' He looked down. It was at his feet. He nodded.

‘They're waiting for you on the set,' he said.

‘They can wait.' She twisted in the bed, revealing a breast he had seen before, and leaned down to the floor to pick up the Du Maurier cigarettes. She held out the box for Joe. ‘Take two,' she said, in her unforgiving Yorkshire accent. ‘Light mine.' She held out the lighter. ‘I always think that's dead romantic.'

He did as he was bid. Marjorie Partington was her real name, fresh up from Barnsley, spotted by Tim Radley the documentary and feature films maker who was completing a movie,
Soho by Night.
Joe was making an arts process film about his working methods and he had been roped in to help in the setting up of a couple of sequences: including Madeleine the stripper whom Tim liked as much for her Yorkshire accent as for her amazingly proportioned and, as Joe had seen in the rehearsal, unusually supple body.

She tried and failed to blow a smoke ring.

‘We're both from the North,' she said, ‘so I can be honest with you.' She tried again and failed again and Joe could see that it annoyed her. Now she was propped up against the pillows, the sheet clutched over her breasts, her face completely revealed as fully made-up. ‘I didn't run off to London to show my parts to a lot of dirty old men in macs.' She tossed her head; it was a well-rehearsed gesture and the thick blonde mane bounced back without hesitation. ‘I'm not knocking the money,' she said. ‘Money's good. But it's not me, Joe, not running between dirty little clubs watching dirty little men play with themselves. I want a career.'

Joe nodded and swallowed cigarette smoke and coughed until his eyes watered.

‘You need something for that,' she said.

It was a little like a ventriloquist act, Joe thought. This beautiful woman, the blonde hair thickly waved, luxuriant, the features haughty, sexy, proud, but the voice straight from traditional Northern music-hall comedy.

‘I know I speak common,' she said. ‘You're thinking that, aren't you? But that can be worked on. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't speak common yourself once upon a not very long time ago, my friend.'

‘I did,' said Joe eagerly, in his new middle-media-class tones.

‘Well, if you can get over it we all can, can't we, Joe?'

‘Yes,' said Joe. ‘Oh, yes.'

‘I want a film making about me,' she said. ‘Not just the stooge part in some dirty-minded director's little titivation. I can sing, me, and I can
dance. That's what I came here for. And when I saw you, Joe, yesterday, at what they called the rehearsal which was a free show to me, I thought – he'll do it; he'll make a film on me. Watch this.'

She hesitated for a moment and then said,

‘Christ! Don't worry. You won't see anything you didn't see yesterday and you paid nothing then neither.'

She was magnificent! She sang ‘Walking Back to Happiness'. The Northern accent was whipped off and replaced by an accurately mimicked Southern American soul drawl. And how she moved! Joe had seen the new women in the pop groups on television and Madeleine moved better than any of them, even though the lack of a dress might be an influence on his opinion. She gyrated like a stripper and strutted like a rocker. Though there was no band, her strong big rhythmic voice drove through the room.

‘You were great!' he said. ‘You really were.'

She was flushed.

‘Really? You really mean it? Really?'

‘Really. You were fantastic.'

‘Do you think you can do something with me?'

‘Yes. Or somebody can. Yes.'

‘Why not you, Joe?' She walked towards him, as tall as he was, glowing, a slight sheen of sweat. ‘I'd like it to be you.'

‘I'll try,' he said. ‘I'll ask.' Ross McCulloch? ‘You deserve it.'

Why were his words choking in his throat? He stood up. She was all but on him.

‘You won't let me down, will you, Joe?' Her eyes were blue and wide now and, he could tell, faking it, but that made no matter. ‘I've been let down too many times in my life.'

Somehow from the thicket of his throat came words which, unscrambled, indicated that he would not dream of letting her down. She breathed very deeply, contentedly, her breasts rising and falling with satisfaction.

She looked over her shoulder at the bed.

‘We could celebrate,' she said, ‘our new partnership.'

‘I'm married,' Joe said. ‘I'm married.'

Marjorie smiled.

‘I respect you for that, Joe.' She reached down and held him hard. ‘But you can't deny an interest in the matter.'

‘I'm married,' he said, gasping a little. ‘Shall I wait outside?'

‘While I put my clothes on?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think I'm going to like you, Joe, you daft bugger.'

It took him some time to disentangle that encounter. When he told Tim Radley how astounding ‘Madeleine' was as a singer and a dancer the great man replied, ‘We wondered what took you so long.' When he tried ways to honour his promise and get a film made about her, ways failed him and he broke his promise and felt bad. She haunted him. When he remembered what had happened he could not believe he had behaved like that but he knew that there was no other way he could have behaved and yet there was the undeniable fact of the erection.

A few months later, Tim Radley embarked on a project to do a dramatised documentary commissioned by Ross McCulloch on the life of Nijinsky and asked Joe if he thought he could write it. ‘Ross told me that he'd heard you read some of your own stuff and it's quite promising, he said. He suggested I give you a chance.'

He counted James as an old friend even though they had met only at Oxford. Joe was sparing in his use of ‘friend' and considered it linked with length of time. But Oxford had been a new beginning and undeniably brought new friends, and James, surprising, Buddha-like, thoughtful, affectionate, James, like David, had become one.

‘If you've nothing better to do we could meet for a drink,' James said.

‘That would be great.'

‘There's a pub in the street next to you, in Wardour Street.' He gave the name. ‘I could be there by eight.'

‘Thanks. Good. Yes.' When Joe put down the phone he realised that he was relieved. Natasha and their daughter had gone to Brittany that morning for their summer holiday. At the last minute Joe had been delayed because of the difficulties in the editing of the Nijinsky programme. It would be at least three days before he could join them and he had rung James, seeking help to fill in the unexpected prospect of an evening in London without Natasha. He would be finished in the sweaty little basement cutting room in Soho well before eight but strolling the streets in anticipation of seeing an old friend was a far better prospect than lugging himself back to an early night in the empty house in Kew.