The Kings of Eternity (4 page)

Perhaps it was the emotional state I then found myself in, or the fact that I interpreted Ticehurst’s gaze as covetous of Carla. At any rate, I was overcome by the irrational, stomach-churning sickness of jealousy. I turned on my heel and fled from the stage, managing in my haste to trip up twice on the way out.

After the heat of the footlights, the chill of the rapidly descending twilight hit me like a refreshing shower. I all but ran from the side-street, taking in great drafts of cold air. An omnibus drew up to a stop not five yards ahead, and I needed no further invitation. Within fifteen minutes I was home.

I built a fire and brewed a pot of tea. I sat before the blaze, holding the steaming mug in both hands and staring into the flames. My thoughts were confused: they cavorted alternately between the plight of my father, and Carla... By turns I convinced myself that she was conducting an affair with Ticehurst, and then, the very next second, told myself that I was suffering nothing more than a lover’s insane paranoia. Whereupon, the image of my father would swim into my mind’s eye, and I immediately experienced guilt at the selfishness of my thoughts.

I was hauled from my reverie by the insistent summons of the telephone: I ignored it. I was in no mood to share my feelings with anyone, least of all Carla, should she be ringing in a bid to tempt me to that night’s opening performance.

The ringing ceased and I lost all sense of time. I think I dozed, but for how long I had no idea.

I had been listening to the knocking upon the door for at least a minute, without realising quite what it was, before sense returned and I moved myself from the lounge and into the hall.

“Jonathon! What have you been doing? I’ve been knocking for absolutely ages, and before that I rang!”

She pecked me on the cheek and hurried past. When I followed her into the lounge, she was bending before the fire and toasting her fingers.

“Oh! So cold out there!”

I was constantly amazed at how, once off stage, she reverted to speaking with a pronounced French intonation. I could not deny that I found it attractive.

“I have one hour before I must get back to the Curzon, Jonathon,” she said, turning and wiggling her bottom at the flames. “I have come around to see if you would like to come tonight.”

She pulled a pained face in anticipation of my refusal. “Oh, Jonathon, please say you will! For me!”

She was tall and slim, with a pale beautiful face and dark hair cut in a page boy style. She wore a tight-fitting red dress, silk stockings, and a tiara in her hair. My heart melted at the very sight of her, fool that I was.

I wanted to tell her about my father, and at the same time did not want to spoil her opening night. She was over-excited from the dress-rehearsal, like a child anticipating Christmas day.

“Do say you’ll come, Jonathon!”

I stared at her. “Do you love me, Carla?”

She came to me, her lips forming a hurt
moue
. She lay her head on my chest and said, “You’re the only man in my life, Jonathon,” which was not quite the answer I was hoping for.

She was thirty, and divorced, and had had a string of lovers over the course of the years, and I often found myself feeling inadequate in the light of her amorous experience, and not a little jealous of her past lovers.

I held her and kissed the top of her head. “Leave the ticket. I’ll try to make it. I’ve had a tiring day.”

She looked up through lashes like curled wire. “How is the novel coming along?”

I smiled. “Slowly, as ever. Little by little.”

“Little by little.” She often repeated my habitual phrases, an affectation I found delightful. It somehow convinced me that she was mine.

“Jonathon, are you alright? You seem distracted.”

“I’m still living the novel,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Thus reassured, she pulled away and resumed her coat. She fished in her purse for the ticket and passed it to me.

“Please do come, for me,
oui
?” She smiled, mischievous. “And later, after the show, come back to my place, yes?”

And, with another swift peck on my cheek, she was gone.

I stood before the fire, contemplating feeding the ticket to the flames. Something stopped me, perhaps her invitation, the promise of her body that night. I thought of my father, and Alastair Ticehurst, and moved to the bedroom to change for the play.

Two hours later, as I approached on the ‘bus, the Curzon hove into sight through the gloom like an illuminated cruise liner. Picked out above the entrance of the theatre in a pointillism of glowing bulbs was the title of the play, its author and, I was gratified to see, the name of the leading lady, Carla DeFries, alongside that of the leading actor. I was pleased to find that the name of Alastair Ticehurst was relegated to a poster beside the entrance.

I joined the well-dressed crowd that filed into the foyer, submitted my ticket and slipped into the auditorium. Carla had provided me with a good seat in the centre of the stalls. I scanned the programme, reading the biographical details of the leading lady and marvelling, not for the first time, at the fact of our intimacy.

The lights dimmed and the murmurous audience fell silent; the curtain parted to reveal the pristine Himalayan scene, even more remarkable when viewed head on, without the apparatus of the wings to mar the verisimilitude.

Survivors scrambled from the wreckage of the plane, at the forefront of which was Carla. For the duration, I forgot myself, my father’s illness and my stalled novel - even my troubled affair with the beautiful woman who held the audience spell-bound. Like them, I was captivated.

As I watched her upon the stage, playing the part of an English lady with the poise and grace of someone to the manor born, I looked back to the time before our affair. It is a fault of the human psyche that we are forever dissatisfied: before Carla I had been lonely, and craved amorous affairs with beautiful women - but yet my heart did not know the turbulent emotions that love would bring. Now, there were occasions when I hankered after the emotional simplicity of the time before I’d met Carla.

But intimacy with another, I reminded myself, brings a greater understanding of oneself - even if what one discovers is not always pleasant. Surely, I reasoned, self-knowledge is what all of us, especially those of us attempting to make sense of existence through the medium of art or literature, are striving to attain?

So I sat and stared at the story unfolding on the stage before me, my mind often wandering, at times absorbed by the production, at others merely in awe of Carla’s presence, only to be brought up short from time to time by the jolting reminder of my father’s illness.

I recalled that he had asked me to obtain tickets for the play, and wondered now if that would be such a good idea. In the play, a group of travellers crash-land in the sequestered mountain Kingdom of Shangri-La, and find immortality in this magical realm for the duration that they might remain there: to stray beyond the environs of Shangri-La meant the onset of rapid and irrevocable ageing.

I could hardly subject my father to such a crass reminder of his condition. I determined to seek out another play that might interest him instead.

The story played itself out, the finale predictably romantic and satisfactory. The curtain came down to enthusiastic applause; the cast took five curtain calls.

Released from the visual spell of the production, I became critical. The writing was loose and inaccurate, the characterisation shallow; the play was unbalanced and a trifle absurd... I resolved not to apprise Carla of my opinion, at least not immediately after the show when she would be charged with adrenalin and in need only of praise and support.

As the auditorium emptied, I moved backstage; I made myself known to a member of staff at the door and was duly admitted into a noisy and crowded bar.

I knew the routine. I bought myself a half of stout and stood at the bar, surveying the great and the good of the London theatre scene. I recognised one or two faces; agents and entrepreneurs, but avoided falling into conversation: I disliked the compulsory approbation that permeated the air of a backstage bar in the immediate aftermath of a production. As a reviewer, I often had to lay my critical facilities aside for the interim, until the cold light of the following day permitted me to dip my quill in spleen.

The door from the dressing rooms opened from time to time, and heads turned
en masse
to greet the conquering heroes. When Carla finally emerged, she was met with a flurry of waves and smiles.

She dodged through the gathering in a sinuous series of side-steps, snared here and there by affected kisses and the laying on of hands. Once or twice she saw me, as I waited patiently at the bar, and made a big-eyed face of forbearance - but I could tell that she was revelling in the sycophantic attention.

She reached me at last, by which time I’d ordered her a double gin and tonic. She reached up to kiss me.

“Jonathon, you came! Wasn’t it wonderful? Five curtain calls! Five!”

“You were marvellous.” Over her head, I scanned the gathering for any sign of Alastair Ticehurst.

“What did you think of the first scene in the second act? That line, ‘Where all the birds fly to at night.’ Isn’t it just too obvious, darling? I wanted to change it, but the director wouldn’t hear of it. I mean, he’s such a dear most of the time, but he does dig his heels in occasionally. I should introduce you to the writer who adapted the book. He’s around here somewhere. Sweet man...”

She was off, an unstoppable flow of adrenalin-induced prattle that I found at once endearing and infuriating.

She finished her drink, and I had another one ready. She tipped it back. “Jonathon, you did like the play, didn’t you? I know it’s only an entertainment, but it does say
something
, doesn’t it?”

I smiled at her. “As an entertainment, it’s very enjoyable,” I offered, hoping this might suffice.

The feel of her in my arms made me want to leave the place there and then, whisk her off to her flat for a night of intimacy, the worries of the world forgotten. But these gatherings were wont to drag on for hours, moving on to a nearby pub, and then continuing to a night club, until the post-production energy had dissipated into hangovers and depression.

Carla waved and danced across the room. She returned a minute later with none other than Alastair Ticehurst. He was a short, clean-faced handsome man in his late twenties, with blonde curls and a look, I swear, of insufferable arrogance.

Carla introduced me. “Jonathon, this is Al.” I wondered if she was playing a game, or merely drunk. She was downing her third gin and tonic with an abandon that bordered on the obscene.

I shook hands with Ticehurst and exchanged a few strained pleasantries. To my annoyance, he insisted on asking me what I ‘did’.

Carla was still hanging on his arm. “Jonathon’s a novelist, Al. I told you.”

The prig swirled his brandy with a practised air of condescension and stared up at me. “A novelist? Are you published?”

I’d had this response before, and it has always struck me as asinine. If one introduced oneself as an air-line pilot, would the other person then ask, “Have you ever flown a plane?”

I drained my glass. In the crush of people jostling us, I found it easy to ignore him. I squeezed from the press and bought myself another drink, a pint this time, and remained at the bar for the next hour.

Towards eleven, Alastair Ticehurst sought me out. He was more than a little tipsy by now, and I was in no mood to suffer fools.

“You’re a ler-lucky man,” he slurred.

“How’s that?”

He gestured with his brandy glass, sloshing the contents, towards Carla, who was laughing uproariously among a group surrounding the play’s director. “God, what a beautiful woman.” His eyes devoured her, and it was all I could do to stop myself from punching the fool.

He focused on me. “Did she tell you that me and her-” he hiccupped - “me and her, once upon a time...”

I lowered my head and whispered into his ear. “She did tell me that you were an insufferable prig,” I began.

Rather than bridle at this, he laughed. “That’s interesting, be-because she, she told me that you’re insanely jealous.”

I decided that, rather than continue the insults, I would get myself another pint - but he was like a dog with a bone. He sidled up to me. “Langham, I remember now. Jonathon Langham. Of course, now I come to think about it... I have read one of your novels.
Summer in Kallithéa
, ser-something like that.”

I tried to ignore him, eased myself through the bodies to Carla. She wrinkled her nose. I sought her hand, but she pulled it away.

Ticehurst was right behind me. “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t much like it. Very shallow, unbelievable.”

“Very much like you performance tonight,” I said. “And I noticed you fluffed a line in the first act.”

I had the bad luck to state this during a lull in the conversation, and everyone heard.

Carla turned to me, wide-eyed. “Jonathon.” She swayed. “I think you owe Al an apology.”

“I was merely stating a fact, darling. Or can’t you people take criticism?”

Carla reached out and linked arms with Ticehurst. There was something at once malicious and calculating in her gaze as she stared at me. Pointedly, she mock-whispered to Ticehurst, “Take no notice of Jonathon, dear. He can be an awful stuffed-shirt at times.”

I heard a round of stifled giggles as the carousing continued. I escaped to the bar, contemplated yet another beer, then thought better of it.

I pushed through the crowd towards the exit, hoping that I had departed unseen. I was drunk, and the drunkenness exacerbated my rage. I was angry at Carla and Ticehurst, quite naturally, but also at myself for so crassly losing my temper. I should have treated the creep with the contempt he deserved, and cut him dead. Instead, I had given Carla more ammunition to use against me.

It was almost midnight by the time I arrived home. By some miracle, the fire was still glowing. I added more coal and brewed myself a tea - the universal panacea. I pulled up the armchair and sat in the warmth of the fire, going over and over the events in the bar and resolving that I should do the wise thing and end my relationship with Carla.