Telling Lies to Alice (10 page)

“What are you doing?”

“Going to pay for the paper.”

Inside the shop, Mrs. Bowers said, “I’m sure I recognise him. Wasn’t he on the telly, your fellow? He looks ever so familiar.”

“Jack Flowers.”

“That’s it! I knew I’d seen him somewhere before. He used to be with that other one, didn’t he?”

“Lenny Maxted.”

“That’s right, Lenny Maxted. Too clever for me, all that talk. I like a bit of singing and dancing.” She leant across the counter. “He can’t bear to let you out of his sight for a moment, can he?”

“Sorry?”

“Well, it was the way he kept going over to the window—I couldn’t think what he was doing. Pardon me, dear, but I thought maybe he was a bit, you know . . . not quite right in the head. Then I saw you out there.” She smiled conspiratorially.

“Must be nice for you, dear. It’s not right being on your own, is it? Not at your age.” I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t lead to more questions, so I just nodded and hoped she’d think I was being shy about it.

I came out to find Jack still standing beside the bin, staring down at its contents. He must have rearranged them while I was in the shop because the porno-corpse headline had been replaced by
TWENTY NEW KING-SIZE PICCADILLY 45p
. He looked agitated.

“Jack? There isn’t anything about you in there, is there?”

“No. For Christ’s sake, take the dog and let’s go.” He strode off so fast that I was practically running to keep up. My mind was whirling. What was all that business with the paper? He’d tried to make a joke of it, but he hadn’t wanted me to see what was in it. Was that because I’d told him about the cutting? Either way, it didn’t make sense: How did he know what was in the paper? It was today’s, and I don’t get one delivered, so he couldn’t have seen it . . . Unless he already knew about the Kitty business—if that’s what it was—and he was afraid I’d see something else . . .

Jack stopped at the bend to light a cigarette and flicked the match into the hedge. I dived in after it. “Don’t do that, you’ll set the whole world on fire!”

“Sorry.” He smiled at me. It reminded me of Lenny in the haystack, that first time. He looked at me for a moment and said, “Penny for them.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go on.”

“When . . . you and I . . . You didn’t tell Lenny, did you?”

“No, darling.”

“Not when you were in America, or—”

“I’m not
that
much of a shit, Alice,” Jack said gently.

Before I could say anything else there was a rat-a-tat of hooves and a black Shetland pony, mane and stirrups flying, came careering round the corner. When he saw us, paralysed in the middle of the road, he stopped so suddenly that he almost sat down on his haunches. I grabbed hold of the trailing reins. The pony jerked his head up and backed away, eyes rolling wildly.

“It’s all right.” I stroked his nose. He tried to take a lump out of my arm.

“Where did
that
come from?” asked Jack.

“Must be the Boyles.”

“Boils?”

“B-O-Y-L-E-S. My neighbours. They’ve got a couple of ponies like this. They’ll probably be here in a minute.” Right on cue, I heard shouts and the clatter of more hooves, and three more shaggy ponies—with children on board, this time—hurtled into view.

“Christ,” said Jack, flattening himself against the hedge, “it’s the cavalry.”

“Ta, Alice.” Trudy, the eldest Boyle, was fourteen with bright red hair—and bright red acne to go with it, unfortunately. The choice of an orange T-shirt and a chestnut pony didn’t help. She looked as if she was about to burst into flames. “Lee fell off.”

“Is this one Ronnie or Reggie?” I asked her. “I can’t tell them apart.”

“Did he bite you?”

“He tried,” I said, smiling.

“Then it’s Ronnie. We was going to come and see you, Alice. Dad says to tell you we’ve got the farrier coming Monday afternoon and he’ll do yours if you bring them over.”

“Great. Tell him I’ll be there.”

A small and very dusty-looking kid trailed into view, whacking the grass verge with his riding crop. “Here he is,” said Trudy. “Come on, Lee, you stupid little prat.”

“She keeps laughing at me,” Lee complained, taking Ronnie’s reins from me. The pony nipped his arm. “Ow! Fuckin’ hell!” I frowned at him.

“Sorry, Alice. Can you hang on to him?”

I gave Ronnie a shove to stop him from treading on my foot. “Get up, quick.”

We said good-bye and watched them trot away down the lane. Jack said, “My God, it’s Norman Thelwell’s worst nightmare. Plimsolls, no riding hats, naming ponies after the Kray twins . . .”

“That was their dad. Fred Boyle. He used to work for them.
He says.
Or it might have been the other lot, the Richardsons. It was before he came down here, anyway.” Bodies in cars in lakes, I thought, and added hastily, “It’s probably all rubbish.”

Jack raised his eyebrows, then said, “I’m glad you haven’t got too horsey, Alice.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Hard of face. Large of rump. Like all those show jumpers.”

“Most of them are men.”

“Yes, well. They’ve got big arses, too,” said Jack, sidling towards me and putting a hand on my bottom. “Not you, though.”

Eustace, following his nose, tugged me over to the other side of the lane, leaving Jack behind. “Fred Boyle suffers from wandering-hand trouble, too,” I said, over my shoulder.

“Does he now?” Just as Jack caught up, Eustace, nose down and oblivious, went zigzagging away on an invisible trail. “Bloody dog. He’s doing it on purpose.”

“He doesn’t even know we’re here.”

“What was all that about last night, then?”

“So you
do
remember. I wasn’t sure.”

“I remember that thing carrying on like the Hound of the Baskervilles. You shouldn’t let him sleep on your bed. It’s not hygienic.”

“Nice, though.”

“Not as nice as me.”

“Says who?”

“We were great together, Alice.” Jack looked hurt. “Don’t you remember?”

“Mmm . . .” I pretended to be racking my brain. “It’s no good. You’ll have to remind me.”

“What, here?” Jack caught up and put an arm round me. “There’s nothing I’d like more, but don’t you think we’d better wait till we get home? Just in case the Pony Club reappear?”

“The Boyles wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of the Pony Club,” I said. Eustace set off again, jerking me forwards and throwing Jack off balance.

“I’ve never been very keen on horses,” he said. “Great big hairy things. Funny when you think my dad was a bookie.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“No reason why you should. Sid Flowers, his name was. All on-course, no shop or anything. I’ve always enjoyed gambling. That’s why I joined the club—it had the best casino. And the sexiest girls, of course.”

“Do you still go?”

Jack shook his head. “Full of Arabs.”

Eustace made a lunge for the chicken and Jack smacked him on the nose. He lay down in the middle of the road and sulked. “Oh God, now he won’t move.”

“Good.” Jack started kissing me. “It’s this hot weather . . .” he mumbled into my hair, “When I saw you last night . . .”

I disengaged myself, reached up and twitched away his sunglasses, then stepped back to look at him. His eyes didn’t look blank anymore, or bewildered, just amorous. Same old Jack. I didn’t feel frightened, or paranoid, or . . . anything, really, except . . . well, I wanted him. Simple as that.

“What?” he said.

Something in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t a good sort of excitement, but I felt excited all the same.

“What is it, Alice?”

I hesitated, then thought, what the hell, and kissed him back. “Nothing.”

It was the effect they’d always had on me. Lenny and Jack. Jack and Lenny. I couldn’t help it.

“You are lovely. What on earth made you marry that photographer?”

“Can’t remember . . . Oh
yes
. He was offering Green Shield stamps.”

He laughed and ruffled my hair. “Silly thing.”

“Come on,” I said, “before we get sunstroke.”

We lay side by side in Jack’s room, heads on pillows, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know what to say.

“It happens.”

Jack said, “Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“Oh,
love
. . . It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it bloody matters.”

“It’s probably just too hot, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He sounded like he had when he’d come into my bedroom the night before—the same bewildered tone.

I rolled onto my side and laid my head on his chest. “When I said I couldn’t remember . . . I mean about us, before—I was only teasing. You know that, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to be kind about it.”

“I’m not. It’s true. It was great. It’ll come back.”

I felt his chin brush against my hair as he shook his head. “I’m falling apart, Alice.”

“What’s up?”

Jack gave a bark of laughter.

“Sorry. I meant, what’s the matter?”

He sighed. “That film you asked me about,
Teacher’s Pet
. . . I knew perfectly well what it was. I took it because it was the only work I was offered last year—that and another one like it.”

“What was the other one?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes I do.”

“
About the Size of It.
That was the title. It was about a flower and produce show—all these randy village women competing to see who can grow the biggest marrow and this young stud who helps them with the gardening. . . . It was the usual tired old rubbish with them chasing him round the carrot patch and shots of his bum going up and down between the raspberry canes. . . . Like I said, you don’t want to know.”

“Well, what about now? You said you were doing a play.”

“Charley’s Aunt.”
He reached over, picked up a book from the bedside table, and put it under my nose. “Help yourself. Starts rehearsing next week, then we go on tour: Windsor, Brighton, and a few other places, then it comes into Richmond, and the West End—if it’s any good, which I doubt . . .”

I rolled over onto my stomach and started flicking through the pages. “Which one are you?”

“Charley’s aunt. Lord Fancourt Babberley.”

“You’ll have to wear a frock.”

“That’s about all I’m fit for nowadays.”

“Oh, come on . . .” I turned the book over and read the bit on the back. “It sounds quite fun.”

Jack was silent for a moment, and then he said quietly, “I don’t think I can do it.”

I sat up and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“The play. Even thinking about it frightens the life out of me. I can’t go through with it.”

“Why not? It’s a good play, isn’t it?”

“It’s very good. It’s ten times better than most of the shit that comes into the West End. That’s one thing Findlater’s right about.” Jack sighed. “He keeps telling me I need a comeback—as if I didn’t know—and chewing my ear off about
new directions
. What he means, of course, is that it’s a chance to prove I can do something without Lenny. Cunt’s been dead six years and people still think we’re joined at the hip. I might as well be dragging a corpse about—God knows I did it often enough when he was alive.”

“Jack, don’t.”

“Alice, I’d been carrying him for years.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Two years. More. Do you know what he did, Alice, when we were in the States? He’d disappear in the middle of the night and they’d find him staggering around on the freeway, drunk out of his mind . . . there’d be fucking great Mack trucks coming straight at him and he could barely keep himself upright . . . this was three, four nights a week. I used to go after him. I thought I could talk him round—Christ knows why I thought he’d listen. I’d be on the road dodging cars like a bullfighter, trying to reach him, shouting my head off, and when I got there he’d just push me away, I mean, literally
push me,
he didn’t give a fuck about the traffic. He’d got to the point where he didn’t care about anything.

“The only thing he was interested in—apart from drinking everything he could get his hands on—was the script. He’d get obsessed about different lines, keep showing them to people on the set and saying, ‘Is this funny? Do you think this is funny?’ It would be some electrician or makeup girl or something, what were they supposed to say? I could have told him, it isn’t funny after you get through with it, it’s fucking
tragic
. . . . He didn’t know what he was doing half the time, couldn’t even see the camera. . . . The last night before they fired him, I’d managed to track him down after Christ knows how long and I was standing beside this road watching him weaving about all over the place, and I thought, I can’t do this, step into this traffic, I’ve got a family. . . .” Jack stopped and closed his eyes as if he was trying to stop tears coming, then said thickly, “I just shouted at him. I said, ‘Go ahead and kill yourself, I couldn’t give a fuck. . . .’ They replaced him with a comic named Bugsy Duffit, an American. Old-fashioned. He wasn’t W. C. Fields, but he was all right. Don’t know what happened to him after—not much, I shouldn’t think. They reshot all of Lenny’s scenes, but they must have known the film was a lost cause because it was never released in America, let alone anywhere else. I was on autopilot. I’d got to the point where I didn’t know what I was saying anymore.”

I knew I’d start to cry if I talked about Lenny, so I said, “But if this is a good play—funny—then why don’t you—”

“Jesus, Alice! I. Can’t. Have. Another. Failure. Got it?”

“But why should it be a failure?”

“You don’t know what it’s like. Night after fucking night, going through the motions . . . I don’t think I can, that’s all.” Jack leant forward with his arms on his knees so I couldn’t see his face, and said, “Those kids we met, they didn’t have a clue who I was. Five years ago, they’d have recognised me straightaway. This”—he waved a dismissive a hand at
Charley’s Aunt
—“it’s my last chance. I know that.”

“Well, perhaps . . . if you had a go at learning the lines . . . you might feel better about it. I can help. I mean, if that’ll make it easier.”