The Watchers on the Shore (30 page)

'I don't mind. But the maids are on the landing.'

'We don't want a queue, do we?'

She laughs.

'I'll get dressed, then. Shan't be long.'

'Shall I wait downstairs?'

'No, don't go.'

'What about the maids?'

'Oh, bugger the maids. You don't think one of 'em's our
anonymous friend in disguise, do you?'

'No, but-'

Anyway, they'd see you come in, so you won't be compromised.'

'You're getting bold, aren't you?'

'I'm just getting fed-up with being pushed around by somebody
I don't even know.'

I run water into the basin and strip off my pyjama jacket.
I
want
her to watch me wash and shave. I want to bring the intimacy of
the little ordinary things into our relationship. There's no morning
after with her. It's as valuable in its way as midnight.

'What's the plan for today?'

'We shall have to be out of here by twelve, I suppose.'

'Yes. Do you want to be back at any particular time?'

'No. I've been thinking. I'll skip the train and go back with you
in the car.'

'Is that wise?'

'Oh, to hell with wisdom. We can spend the afternoon here and
arrive back after dark. You could drop me off at the station. It's
going to be tricky enough, so let's make the most of this while we
can.'

'All right.'

Slopping water over myself at the basin I turn my head and look
at her.

'As long as you haven't had too much of me.'

She shakes her head. 'No.'

'Would you mind passing me the toilet bag out of my case.'

She finds it and brings it across, reaching round me and at the same
time placing one hand flat in the middle of my back. I'm suddenly
overcome. I feel as if she's touched my bowels and I close my eyes
for a moment as a wave of black, black despair rushes over me.

16

It doesn't last, of course, while we're together; but it visits me again
in a diluted form that's a kind of defeatist feeling about the hope
lessness of the whole thing after she's dropped me off outside
Longford station and I'm walking home through a sudden thaw
along the dark wet streets. When we're together we're very, very
close; the moment we part a whole hostile world comes between
us; and by Monday morning the week-end has begun to seem like
an impossible dream.

The new play opens on the Monday night. 'World Premiere,'
the notices say, 'of
Jack told my Father,
a play by Wilf Cotton,
author of
Day after Day.'
Donna says there'll be critics from the national dailies there as well as representatives of West End
managements. It's a big night for the Palace and Conroy and I,
sitting in the circle before the curtain goes up, look at the faces of the people in the front two rows to see if there's anybody famous
we can recognize.

It's a kind of north-country family piece, as authentic as fish
and chips, but with a curious offbeat way of looking at some things
that brings you up short with a jolt every now and again. The Jack
in the title is a brother who's gone away and made good and he
represents something different to each of the family at home, who
are all failures in some way. Until finally he comes back and it
turns out that what Jack represents is Jack and they'll all have to
stand on their own feet. Donna plays the younger brother's girl
friend who Jack tries to make and who's the prune mover in blow
ing the gaff on the whole illusion.

The V.I.P.s have drinks in the producer's office afterwards and
Albert and I repair to the Mitre to sink one or two on our own before going to Donna's where there's a later get-together. We go up
the stairs carrying a few bottles of ale each and ring the bell. When
nobody answers we walk in, dump our coats in the passage, and go
into the crowded living-room. There's music coming from the record-player but it's background stuff and nobody's dancing. This is evidently a talking party and we edge past one or two groups standing nearest the door and make for the kitchen. We
meet Donna coming out. Her face is flushed, as though she's too hot, been drinking too much, or had a difference
of opinion with
somebody.

'Oh, there you are. Get yourselves something to drink in the kitchen and come and circulate.'

I'm hoping for some small special look from her but I get
nothing. There's a tall good-looking bloke in the kitchen as we go
in, wearing a fawn sweater and a bow-tie. He's got brown wavy
hair and clean-cut features. A smoothie, if ever I saw one. A split-
second impression because he eyes us both casually and goes out
straight away, carrying a glass of what looks like whisky. We stand
our bottles on the draining-board and look round for something to
drink out of. There are no glasses about so we get a couple of cups
out of the cupboard and use them; and I'm just expounding on the
deficiencies of bottled beer after draught and feeling myself in for a
session of quiet burps with the gas when Donna comes back with a
lean dark-haired bloke, a year or two older than me maybe, in a suede jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a charcoal-grey wool sports shirt under it.

'Look, you two ...' Donna's saying as she comes in. She sees
the cups. 'Is that all you can find to drink from?'

'We're all right,' Albert says.

'You're sure?'

'Well what are you going to do about it if we're not?' I say, conscious more than anything else of wanting to put my arms round her because I haven't seen her for twenty-four hours.

'True enough,' she says. 'Look, though, I wanted Wilf to meet you two. You're all from the same part of the world. Tykes, isn't it?'

'If you like,' Albert says. He's looking at the other feller.
'This'll be the author, I gather.'

'Yes...' Donna performs the introductions. 'Can I leave you for a minute while I go and see to my duties?'

'Tykes ...' Wilf Cotton murmurs, lifting his eyebrows. 'What
part do you come from?'

We tell him, Cressley, and he nods.

'I know the area. I came from Bronhill originally. That's a
mining village between Barnsley and Sheffield.'

My old man's a miner.'

'Oh?' He looks at me, smiling slightly. 'Your credentials are in
good order, then.'

Yeh. Donna was telling me it's like blue blood in the theatre.'

It is as long as the right stuff's being written. The trouble now is, the tide's on the turn. People won't take north-country working-class stuff for its novelty value any more. It's got to be good in its own right.'

'Is that why you're living down here?'

'What? No. No, that doesn't matter. I still write about the same things.'

'I thought writers were tending to stay put now,' Conroy says,
'what with the provinces opening up a bit.'
Cotton shrugs. 'Some do, some don't. Some like to stick close
to their material and others benefit from shaking the provinces off
their backs for a bit and seeing the thing in perspective. My idea is
to try London for a while and then think of going back later. I've got mixed feelings about it but Marguerite - that's my wife - she
loves London. Are either of you married?'

I tell him I am.

'You know what I mean, then. You've got somebody else to
consider.'

He's holding an empty tumbler and I ask him what he's drinking.

'Beer, if there is any.'

I fill him up from one of our bottles as Conroy says:

'What about this play? Will it go on anywhere else?'

That's in the lap of the gods; the critics and managers who came out to see it. The idea in putting it on here was to see if it held together. If they do us proud tomorrow it could do something else.'

'West End?' Conroy asks.

'I daren't think about it.' Cotton pulls a face. 'A long run in
London, two hundred pounds a week while I'm writing my next
book. I'd be set up.'

I'll say!' I'm suddenly busy with thoughts of two hundred quid a week rolling in and Wilf, seeing this, laughs.

'It doesn't happen every day, mate.'

'No, but...'

The possibilities are there,' Conroy says.' You do make a living by writing, don't you?'

In a manner of speaking.'

'You must have done something before, though,' I say.

Oh, yes. I was a wages clerk in a pit office at first. Then I worked in a shirt factory for a bit. Nobody starts out being a full-time writer.'

'I don't know how they do it at all. I wouldn't know where to
begin.'

'Good,' Cotton says.

'What d'you mean?'

'You're honest. I get sick and tired of stupid arrogant bastards who are going to write a book when they find the time. We can all do it, you know. It's just a matter of getting down to it. I tell
them to get cracking. No capital needed. Buy a ream of paper and
a tanner ballpoint and you're in business.'

'Are you better off with plays or books?' Albert asks. 'I mean, if you don't mind us quizzing you.'

He shakes his head, the little smile there again. 'No, that's all
right. But you can't really measure it like that. It depends what you want to write. I suppose you could say that in a roughly
equivalent play and a novel - whatever that might mean - you'd
make more money out of the play. At least everybody pays to see
it, but the trouble with novels is that not many people buy them.
They tell you they're fifteenth on the list at the public library in a 'way that suggests you ought to pin a medal on them for being so
keen.'

Having said one right thing I now drop a clanger, blurting out
without thinking:

'Surely you must have made a packet out of that paperback of
yours. It was all over the bookstalls at one time.'

He looks at me. 'Oh, I'm half-way to being a millionaire; anybody can tell you that. Ten thousand in hardbacks, a hundred thousand in paperbacks, magazine serialization and a film right option that nobody looks like taking up. Say four and a half thousand, less income tax and expenses. It's not a
fortune, is it?'

'It's not as much as I'd've thought, but still...'

Still it sounds nice, doesn't it? And if you could do a book a year like that you'd be comfortable. Except you can't. You strike lucky with only one now and again.'

'You've got to do other things?' Conroy says.

'Yes. Like sending the wife out to work. Haven't I, love?' he
says, turning to the good-looking girl with a haughty^way of holding
her head who's appeared in the doorway.

She's only been there a second and Cotton was standing with his
back to the door. I'm wondering how he sensed her presence as she comes forward and slips her arm through his.