Harry Antlers, pressed daily into an early rising by an abundance of nervous energy, stood in the hotel bathroom shaving. He hated this forced examination of his reflection every morning. Neither his individual features nor the overall impression of his head gave any encouragement in the hopes that he could be considered even slightly handsome. Harry was cursed by outstanding ugliness. As a child, he had thought this state was a phase that would pass. He lived in hope, scrutinizing daily the unkind assembly of features, searching for improvement. But he was never rewarded. The only changes were for the worse. And unfortunately for Harry, the unfair moulding of his countenance was not made up for by a fine and manly body. Harry was not a large man, nor finely made. He was narrow shouldered, a little stooping: a womanly back view. The legs were badly bred, bandy from the thighs down and flaring into thick, square ankles. Well cut trousers could have gone some way to disguising this ungainly shape, but Harry was a man of no taste in clothes, and remained unconscious of the fact that his ill-fitting nylon garments enhanced the unattractiveness of his body.
But for all that he had against him physically, except at shaving time Harry was not unduly depressed by his appearance. He had learned that women’s tastes in men were perverse. They were completely indiscriminate — judging from his many conquests — in the matter of physical appearance. Apparently almost any man was better than no man. And provided the male specimen was just a little famous, could provide money, an air (at least) of power and some show of romantic treatment, then girls, even beautiful ones, were his for the asking. Only last night, he had proved this once again. At a cocktail party in the Plaza he had met a fluttery young thing called Susie. She had dyed blonde hair and huge eyes whose lids trembled with well-rehearsed interest in others. On hearing that Harry was in the theatre she declared that her life’s ambition was to act: she would get there one day, but meantime was working for an airline.
‘You’re a very lovely lady,’ Harry said. ‘Why don’t I buy you dinner and we can discuss your career?’
By his reminder that the pleasure of dinner had to be paid for, Harry left Susie in no doubt of her obligations. They ate seafood in Greenwich Village, having held hands all the way there in the taxi, and within half an hour Harry was so profoundly bored by this lovely lady’s attempts at communication that he could scarcely bring himself to describe his reasons for being in New York. She was predictably impressed: her half exposed bosom quickened its anticipatory rising and falling.
‘You’re a very, very special man, Harry, you know that?’ she said, as he paid the bill.
But the attraction was not mutual, and Harry had to be up early. He saw her home, refused to come in, but promised to call. He knew he would do no such thing. Susie, like all the rest, was not what he was looking for.
Harry carefully wiped the last of the shaving cream from his cheeks. He rinsed them with a cold wet flannel. The slapping noise echoed sullenly in his head, as it always did, reminding him of the constant thwacks of his childhood, the vicious noises that leaked through the thin walls of the bungalow telling of his father’s daily anger with his mother, and the beatings she endured. One day he would meet a girl who would listen to stories of his childhood, and soothe away the memories. In the meantime, the screams, the thumps, the brutal silences and joyless meals lodged darkly in his mind, stirred — much less frequently these days — only by the dabbing of his own cheeks each morning.
He patted them dry, now, leaving the skin dull and colourless, dark shadows under the eyes. Then he brushed his hair: that, at least, was something to be proud of. It always gleamed, Harry Antlers’ hair. He could not remember how many girls had run admiring fingers through it, exclaiming at its fineness. The other thing they admired was his name, and there Harry was bound to agree with them. It had a resounding clash. It evoked images of noble beasts, fighting. It was a distinguished name, a name that people remembered. Antlers. It was the only thing for which he could be the slightest bit grateful to his father.
Harry swung into the bedroom, impatient to be getting on with the day. He dropped on to the unmade bed and picked up the telephone all in one movement. Irritation pricked his skin, making him physically uncomfortable.
‘Where’s my breakfast, for Christ’s sake? I ordered it half an hour ago.’
‘Sorry, sir. I’ll put you through – ‘
‘Don’t put me through anywhere. Just tell them to hurry up. And where’s my post?’
‘Post?’
‘Mail. You know I like it sent up as soon as it arrives. I’ve told you a hundred times I like it — ‘
‘One moment, sir.’ Pause. ‘There’s no mail for you this morning, Mr Antlers.’
‘Nothing?’ Harry heard his voice turn into a whimper of incredulity. It was always a bad day, the day that started with no letters, albeit of the dullest kind. Wherever he was in the world Harry arranged that letters would follow him. They gave him a sense of being planted rather than temporarily placed. Also, a sense of importance. Without constant correspondents seeking to be in touch with him, Harry was a more easily angered man. He slammed down the telephone receiver, switched on the radio. He was always anxious to catch at least four news bulletins a day: not so much because he had an avid interest in world affairs, but because they gave a rhythm to the day. He lay back, briefly relaxed, listening to the droning American voice, and sensed a sudden nostalgia for the Britishness of the BBC’s eight o’clock news. He wondered when he would be returning home.
An hour later, Harry walked down Sixth Avenue, script beneath his arm. He liked New York. He liked its speed, its punch, its lottery of fame and failure, its glinting soaring buildings of menacing glass. But the gentle sun of an early summer morning, the soft air as yet unpolluted by the day, were lost on him. He was not a man who noticed the benefits of nature, or cared for them. His chosen earth was covered with pavements, he cared not a damn for trees or unpeopled landscapes. The restlessness of cities reflected the restlessness of his own blood and spurred him, occasionally, to something near contentment. And within cities his preferred places were indoors: underground theatres, small dark rooms, stuffy offices lit with neon — places that daylight could not penetrate. Sometimes he reflected that he would like all seasons but winter to be abandoned. If the sky had to show itself, it should be a dour grey sky. Only a moonlike sun, less cruel to the ugly, should be allowed. Spring, with all its vulgar promotion of newborn things, should be abolished. For many years Harry had planned his life so that he should avoid the headachemaking greens of April and May. It was with gratitude, now, that the screaming yellow metal of taxi-cabs streamed past his eyes. Manmade colours held no horrors for him. Concrete soothed his nerves.
Harry stopped at a drugstore. Whenever possible, he was a two-breakfast man. His over-active adrenalin glands caused him constant hunger, and here in America his appetites were wonderfully satisfied by a diet of waffles, maple syrup and ice cream sodas.
He looked through the window, wondering whether there was time for griddle cakes and bacon. One hand on his paunch, he glanced idly at the breakfasters on their high stools — people in a hurry, eating with one hand, reading the paper with another. Office folk, there for sustenance rather than pleasure. Harry, if there was time, would eat for pleasure rather than sustenance.
About to enter the drugstore — to hell with being overweight — Harry caught sight of a girl at the far end of the counter. She, like most of the other eaters, was reading. But not for her a newspaper or magazine. The book she held, Harry could see from the cover, was Jane Austen’s Emma. As Jane Austen was hardly a best-selling author among commuting breakfasters on Sixth Avenue, this seemed to be an unusual sight. Harry found himself looking more closely at the reader. He could not see much of her face, for a mass of corn-coloured hair fell over it. She wore a navy sweater, and jeans. Nothing in the least remarkable. And yet there was something very attractive — touching, almost — about her air of concentration. She was apparently oblivious of the noise and surroundings, totally immersed in a very different world. To escape? Harry wondered, and found himself betting his last dollar she was English. Had there been time, he would have gone and sat on the empty stool next to her and asked a few questions. He was often successful in such approaches. But there was no time. He was late already. Harry walked on, thinking suddenly of Mr Knightley. Of all fictional heroes he had always considered Mr Knightley the finest, the one with whom he would most like to be confused.
A couple of hours later Harry sat in the third row of the stalls of a small and dingy off-Broadway theatre. On the seat beside him were three empty cups of coffee and a couple of half-eaten doughnuts, which had in some part made up for the missed second breakfast. So far, he had seen eight girls: eight girls desperate for the part of Laurie, heroine of Begone, the play he was directing by way of a personal favour for an old producer friend, a long-time admirer of Harry’s work. Laurie was a good part. The girl was on stage throughout the play. Whoever got it, should the play have any success — and Harry had no doubts about that — would make her name. No wonder they were all so nervous. But had there been any real talent, Harry would have seen it at once beneath the nerves. As it was, the right girl had not yet come forward. As the next candidate came on to the empty stage, Harry sighed. His belt was too tight, his legs ached from being in the same position so long. Miss Haley Bead, the name on the list, a short and stocky girl with a definite moustache, was not going to be any good. He could tell that at a glance. But she had to be given a chance.
Harry stood up. His benign mood of an hour ago, induced by the doughnuts, was beginning to wear off. Haley Bead came to the front of the stage, frowning against the two spotlights.
‘Haley Bead, Mr Antlers,’ she said.
‘Hello, Haley Bead.’ Harry tried to sound gentle. But judging from the way the girl winced, there must have been something gruff or unwelcoming in his voice. He tapped the open script he held in his hand. ‘Now as you know, Haley Bead, this is the scene where Laurie tells her mother she’s going off to live in Ohio with a truck driver.’
‘Yes, Mr Antlers.’
‘Good. I’m glad you understand that.’
‘Oh, I do.’
‘Excellent. Now, the mother is sitting there, on that chair.’ He pointed to the only prop on the stage. ‘See? The mother’s a tiresome old cow but she loves her daughter. Laurie has a lot of good reasons for going …’
It was the ninth time Harry had said all this and he felt the tediousness of repetition drag in his stomach. ‘Right. Let’s see what you can do.’
Harry sat down. He regretted not sending Chris Heep, his assistant, out for another doughnut to keep him going through Ms. Haley Bead’s performance. Chris Heep was at this moment retying his gym shoes, an act which occupied a large amount of each day, slumped in a seat two away from Harry. The familiar sight was enraging.
‘For Christ’s sake, Christopher Heep, concentrate,’ snapped Harry.
The girl on the stage looked startled. She took a moment or two to recover herself, clenching her hefty fists, and taking a deep, audible sigh. She turned to the empty chair on which sat her invisible mother. She stared ferociously into the space as if confronting Banquo’s ghost rather than a middle-aged woman from Brooklyn. Swallowing, she braced herself for the announcement. The familiar words grated in silence of the small theatre.
Laurie: I’m going, mother. I am, you know. I’m really going this time. I’ve had it up to here.
Haley Bead’s large hand swiped across her neck in a gesture of self-execution. Her eyes never moved.
Laurie: It’s no use you looking like that, mother. You don’t understand. You’ve never understood. You’ve caged me all my life, telling me what to be, how to be, and now I’ve a chance to go and find out for myself who I really am, and you throw a fit.
To emphasize the word, Haley Bead, who had less talent than all the others put together, bent one knee. Harry, who had always found something faintly uneasy-making about these words, thought them particularly embarrassing as spoken by the present candidate. He tapped Chris on the knee, signed that she should be cut off.
‘Better let her go on down to the end of the page,’ whispered the languorous Chris, whose sense of fairness was the only thing keener than Harry’s.
Harry leaned back, thumbs lodged in his belt, and shut his eyes. He had envisaged Laurie as a frail blonde, steeliness beneath her frailty, and all he had seen this morning were butch, liberated girls who equated independence with aggressive unattractiveness. And Haley Bead’s rendering of Laurie’s anguish was the greatest mockery yet. The girl had so little observation she would not get a job picking up rubbish in Central Park. Aggrieved, Harry let her drone on to the end of the page. Then he jumped up, punching the air, cutting her off.
‘Enough, enough. Thanks. I see what you’re getting at.’ He tried to be decent. ‘Very interesting.’
The girl blinked, extricating herself from the misinterpreted skin of Laurie. She was confused by the rude shock.
‘You don’t want me to finish, Mr Antlers? I was just — ‘
‘No thanks. I don’t need to see any more. You’ll be hearing from us.’ He tried to smile. ‘And now, it’s goodbye Haley Bead.’
‘Very well.’ Crushed, the girl left the stage. Harry turned to Chris.
‘And now, we break for lunch.’
At the most annoying times, Chris Heep could be quite firm. He flipped one of his long legs over the seat in front of him.
‘No, we don’t. It’s only twelve-thirty. We can fit in one more. Otherwise we’ll be here all night.’
‘Shit,’ said Harry, sitting down again.
‘Next,’ Chris called.
The girl with the corn-coloured hair, the reader of Emma, walked on to the stage. Harry looked at his list. Viola Windrush. A note said she had had a couple of small parts in plays for BBC Television, and a summer season at the Salisbury Playhouse. So he was right about her nationality.
When Harry looked up again Viola Windrush was sitting on the empty chair.
‘That’s the mother’s chair, not Laurie’s,’ he roared. Viola turned to him.
‘I was merely waiting for instructions,’ she said.
Harry scratched his ear. It was the first English voice he had heard for weeks, and a very sweet one. Totally useless for playing Laurie from Brooklyn.
‘What the hell are they doing sending you to audition for this part? They might have known a nice English girl like you would be the last thing I want.’
‘God knows,’ said Viola, with a small smile. ‘I made the same point myself. But they said I might as well try.’ She remained on the chair, hands folded in her lap, unmoving.
‘Well, I suppose you might as well, now you’re here.’
A small rise of Viola’s shoulders indicated a stifled sigh.
‘If you like,’ she said, looking at him, ‘I could save your time by not going through with it. To be honest, I should hate to get the part, even if I was suitable. I think it’s a terrible play.’
Viola, who was by nature a placid creature not inclined to provoking scenes, was amazed by her own forthrightness. She had heard of Harry Antlers, of course. In the theatre he was known as a brilliant bully. Working with him was reputed to be exciting in some respects, but full of hazards due to his irrational responses. If an actor was able to stand up to the Antlers’ form of treacherous behaviour, then an exceptional performance was sometimes achieved. He had his loyal followers and fans: there were those who claimed there was a kind and touching side to him. But for the most part, actors and producers who had worked for him once would never deign to do so again. He was taken on by new people confident they could handle him — only to join the ranks of those who could not. Actors who did not know him met him with a mixture of dread and hope: fear that he would use his usual bullying tactics in front of the whole company, but hope that he might use his rare magic to inspire a great performance. Viola, for her part, had felt a natural apprehension about the audition, but as she positively did not want the part of Laurie she knew she risked nothing by being honest. What mattered greatly to her was that she should not become yet another of Harry Antler’s crushed victims.
Her impudence — Harry did not give himself time to think of her gesture as one of consideration — immediately angered Harry.
‘Right,’ he shouted, standing again. ‘Right, right, right. Thank you very much for your opinion, Miss Windrush. Very grateful for it. Delighted you’re not going to waste my time.’
Under the spotlights Viola was frowning, unnerved by his anger. She wished she had not been so foolish as to agree to come for the audition. Chris heaved himself to his feet, confident some sort of scene was about to take place which he had no desire to witness, or to be called upon later to give evidence.
‘I’m off to a movie, back at two,’ he said, and hurried away. His heart was not in the theatre, but in Hollywood. Even working, reluctantly, for Harry Antlers, he managed to see three or four films a day.
Harry and Viola remained alone in the theatre. Viola stayed in her place, unmoving on the chair. Her stillness, her calm in face of his fury, enraged Harry further.
‘Well, come on down from the stage. Or are you going to stay there thinking things over all through the lunch hour?’
Harry’s tone, despite himself, was less harsh. Viola stood up, moved to the steps that led down into the small auditorium. She stopped a few paces away from him. She was much shorter than Harry.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m going.’ Away from the spotlights, her hair was dimmer, an unburnished mass that foamed about her pale face. She had very dark eyes, but Harry could see that they were not brown. They seemed to be navy. The first navy eyes he could remember seeing.
‘Right,’ he said again, and felt an annoying pulse begin to beat in his temple. ‘But if you change your mind I daresay we could still fit you in somehow this afternoon. It’ll only be mildly inconvenient.’
‘I’m not changing my mind, thank you.’
‘Would you like something to eat?’ This was not a premeditated question. It came without thought, surprising Harry himself. Viola shrugged.
‘All right. If you like.’
Harry looked at his watch. An hour and ten minutes till he had to be back for the afternoon session. He had intended to go across the road to an excellent hamburger bar where he could seek comfort in a couple of jumbo burgers and a thick malted milk shake. But with this sudden turn of events his appetite suddenly fled. He could not bear the thought of such food eaten in upright discomfort, and quickly calculated how long it would take a taxi to get to his favourite restaurant on Third Avenue.
‘We’ll have to hurry,’ he said. ‘There’ll be just time for you to give me a few of your interesting opinions on the play.’
Outside, the sun was aggressively bright. Warm. Sweat dampened Harry’s armpits in instant reaction. In the blessed shade of the cab he was aware that he smelled quite pungently. Viola screwed up her nose, turning her head away, looking at the cross-town shops. Neither spoke.
In the crowded Italian restaurant, they had to wait ten minutes for a table. Harry sweated harder. He would have liked to have walked out to express his indignation at the outrageousness of keeping so regular a customer waiting. But there was no time to go elsewhere. He pouted, frowned, tapped his paunch with impatient fingers. Viola kept on looking away, as if she had nothing to do with him.
At last they were seated in a small corner table. Harry ordered himself a fillet steak with French fries, without looking at the menu.
‘I always have the same,’ he said. It sounded like a boast. He then suggested a whole list of American cocktails Viola might like: she politely rejected them all and asked for mineral water with her plain grilled fish. Her skin was the colour of moonstones.
‘So what have you got against the play?’
‘Almost everything.’
‘And what makes you think you’re any kind of judge?’
Viola shrugged. ‘I don’t ask anyone to consider my opinion. But I read a lot of plays, for pleasure, and because I’d like to write one myself one day. Reading so much, it gets easier to detect a false note, a hollow core, or just plain bad writing.’
‘Ha ha! So we have here a budding writer,’ Harry sneered.
‘A budding writer as well as a budding actress. A multitalented lady, indeed.’
Viola smiled slightly, ignoring his sarcasm.
‘Oh, I’m not really a budding actress. I used to think I’d like to be one and I was lucky enough through devious means’ — she smiled again — ‘to get one or two parts in England. But I didn’t enjoy it. And I wasn’t much good. So I’ve returned to the original desire of writing — one day.’
‘Connections,’ Harry snapped, his mind still on the earlier part of her explanation, which infuriated him. ‘If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s people who not only have connections, but use them.’
Viola took a sip of water. When she put it down a thin line of silvery bubbles made a jewelled moustache on her curly top lip. She blushed, her pale cheeks briefly colouring.
‘Do you?’ she said. ‘That must cause you a lot of discomfort much of the time.’
Having prepared himself for an invigorating argument, Harry found himself mellowed by the first mouthfuls of steak and chips. He saw no point in pursuing this particular course and asked why she was in New York. He was rewarded with no more than a cursory explanation: her agent had arranged the audition, but the real reason was to talk to her brother about the future of a house they jointly owned. The very idea of such a problem annoyed Harry. He could feel irritation, a physical thing, spiking up through the cushion of food that lay heavily in his stomach.
‘Ah,’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re obviously from the privileged classes.’ His voice was bright with resentment. Viola flinched.
‘Well, I have no such fortune — or misfortune, whichever you like to call it. I come from a very ordinary background.’
‘Ordinary backgrounds are such good excuses, aren’t they?’ said Viola, quietly. Harry chose to ignore this remark.
‘Believe it or not, until three years ago I had never seen an avocado pear.’
Viola sighed. She tried to contain a smile. To take such chips on the shoulder seriously would be insulting to their owner.
‘If that sort of revelation is designed to make me feel uncomfortable,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid it hasn’t succeeded.’
Harry said nothing. They only had five minutes for coffee, and so far things had not gone well. He had failed to intimidate this cool, arrogant young English girl, and he was unused to such failures. He ordered coffee, made a great effort to quell the turbulence of feelings that clashed within him.
‘Why don’t you give me your address and telephone number?’ he said at length.
‘Whatever for? Why would you want to get hold of me? Besides, I shall be going home in a few days.’
Harry thought quickly.
‘You’re not entirely wrong about the play,’ he said. ‘I have to believe in it if I’m directing it. But there are some weaknesses, I have to admit. Perhaps you could … give a hand with a bit of rewriting.’ He knew he had played skilfully upon Viola’s vanity, and was rewarded with an encouraging smile.
‘I could try,’ she said, and gave Harry the address of her brother’ apartment.
In the taxi he said:
‘Are you going anywhere special? Because if you’re not doing anything I’d be very grateful if you’d sit in on the rest of the auditions this afternoon. I’d like your opinion.’
Viola’s eyebrows rose under her hair.
‘Very well. But I’m no judge of an actress, really. It’d be interesting, though.’
‘Thanks,’ said Harry, with his most charming smile.
Back in the theatre, stuffy and airless in the afternoon heat, Viola refused to sit with Harry next to Chris in the front row. Instead she took a place at the back, a little guilty at having agreed to this privilege. She enjoyed watching the actresses do their best with Laurie’s clumsy speech, and wondered why Harry made so little effort to put each one of them at her ease. Mid-afternoon, a girl from California appeared on the stage. She seemed without doubt to be the best. Viola wondered if Harry would agree. She wrote the actress’s name on the back of her cheque book, and began to think how she could improve Laurie’s part by some rewriting. It would be exciting to be given the chance. A modest beginning, but a beginning. At five o’clock — the hours had passed uncommonly fast — Viola remembered she had promised her brother she would be back early for an uninterrupted talk before his girlfriend came home. She left the theatre unnoticed.
Harry, too, was surprised by the enjoyment of the afternoon. The fact that Viola sat silently ten rows behind him caused a peculiar sense of well-being he had no time to define. Without articulating the idea very clearly to himself, he imagined discussing the afternoon’s candidates with her over a drink … perhaps dinner. In the girl from California he reckoned he had found as near a perfect Laurie as he could get, and wondered whether Viola would agree. At six, when the last girl had gone, he turned to the back of the auditorium, full of pleasurable anticipation. At first, seeing Viola had gone, he was unable to believe his eyes. He stood quite still, fingers rubbing against the bristly stuff of the seat in front of him, rage piling within. Like everyone else he had the misfortune to meet, she was a traitor. She had betrayed him — accepted his proposal happily enough, only to betray him.
‘The bitch!’ he shouted out loud, startling the sleepy Chris. ‘She’ll pay for this.’
He marched up the aisle to the door, to the dreaded gold light of early evening, his head flaming with plans for revenge. Outside, he hailed a cab and ordered it to drive to the nearest McDonalds. He needed several hamburgers and a thickly malted milkshake before he would be in any condition to fight for calm and give himself a chance to think.
An hour later Harry entered the dusky lobby of his hotel a placid man. The rage and disappointment of so short a time ago had ebbed away, to be replaced by an irrational optimism, a quiet acceptance of some kind of unclear but possible happiness. Such feelings in Harry were rare, and to be made the most of: he smiled extravagantly at the man behind the reception desk, who handed him a letter. A girl’s writing, and sent round by hand. Thinking it could only be an instant apology from Viola for her untimely disappearance — hell, the girl needn’t have apologized, he had judged her too harshly — he handed the man two dollars, murmuring ‘Get yourself a huge drink, George.’ (It was one of his habits to call members of the hotel staff by their Christian names, to show he was at one with them, on their side, understood their ordinary lives.) George, whose actual name was Jack, smiled gratefully.
In the dusk of his room — Harry liked shutters always to be closed — he slit open the letter with shaking fingers. At a glance, the handwriting was not that of an educated English girl.
Dear Harry, this is to thank you for a truly wonderful evening last night. I find it hard to put into words what I felt when I woke up this morning. It was that something really good, and unusual, had gone on between us, and I wondered if you felt like that, dearest Harry, too? It isn’t often that one meets a real soulmate and such chances shouldn’t be missed. I know you’re a very popular man and probably have hundreds of girls at your beck and call, and perhaps only think of me as yet another blonde. But I am a blonde who really cares for you — yes, even in so short a time. I know I would like to do all sorts of things for you, like cook your breakfast and clean your windows and mend your socks. You make me feel wonderfully unliberated, which is a great relief these days. I have thought of you all day and am keeping my fingers crossed you will call me tonight and we can go on from where we left off. With great affection, and with love, Harry — Susie.
Harry owned a suitcase in which he kept all such letters and photographs of their writers. It privately entertained and comforted him to think he had so valuable a store of evidence of the love and admiration he inspired in a multitude of heterogeneous women. Sometimes he ruffled through the letters, picking them up and letting them fall over his head like overgrown confetti. Sometimes he re-read them, laughing out loud at their incompetent phrasing, the cliches they employed to try to express the passion they felt. None of them had ever been rewarded with an answer that indicated requited feelings. Harry did not write love letters. He did not love. He had never loved, though sometimes he had imagined it was a state, like a tropical storm, that might blast him one day.
Susie’s letter, had Harry been in a less impatient frame of mind, would have been filed to take back to England and added to the store. As it was, he screwed it up and threw it across the room into the wastepaper basket. Clean his windows, indeed. What made her suppose he owned any windows to clean? And why hadn’t Viola sent an apology?
Harry was uncertain what to do with his evening. He had tickets for a Broadway musical. Chris had invited him to see a film. Neither idea appealed. For some weeks, after his arrival in New York, which had been noted in a small paragraph in a gossip column, he had received many invitations from hospitable Americans. His name was still well-known, even outside theatrical circles: fame had come upon him in his early twenties with a play called Host of Lies. Harry had met the author, an undergraduate, in a pub. Secretly sympathetic to the subject, and recognizing an original talent in the writer, he had agreed to direct the play. It was put on at the Edinburgh Festival, where overnight it became the star show of the Fringe. Later, transferred to London, it received ecstatic reviews and ran for two years. To Harry’s further amazement it then went to New York, where it had a short but successful run off-Broadway. Thus Harry’s reputation was made on both sides of the Atlantic.
And the two years of the play’s life had been happy ones. Harry enjoyed the fame, the recognition, the being in demand both professionally and by ambitious girls. He enjoyed the sudden money, too, though he spent little on himself. It did not occur to him to leave his unsalubrious flat, or get himself a powerful car. His pleasure was to buy a larger bungalow for his parents and realize his sister’s ambition by setting her up in a shoe shop in Dibden Purlieu. The rest he spent on food, travel and flowers for the extraordinary number of beautiful girls to whom he had suddenly become desirable.
But those heydays were many years ago. Since then he had been in fairly constant demand — diminishing, of late — to direct both for the stage and minor feature films. But there had been no success similar to that first play. Harry was still known as the man who had discovered and directed Lies, a reputation which no longer gave him any joy — only reminded him just how long ago that single triumph had been.
‘Harry Antlers, director of the controversial Host of Lies in the seventies, is back with a new play,’ the story had run. But the novelty of English visitors of fading fame wears off quickly. A stay of more than a few weeks ensures a decline in popularity and Harry had been here for two months. Invitations were no longer forthcoming. He was reduced to engendering his own fun, or spending his evenings alone. This evening, if he could not be with Viola, Harry wished to be alone. But he was plagued by restlessness, and had no desire to sit in his airless room watching television. And so when he was sure the sun had gone down behind the skyscrapers, leaving the streets in merciful shadow, he left the hotel, heading for Third Avenue. He walked slowly at first, enjoying a small breeze that had cleared the heat of the day. Then, from nowhere, an idea came to him. Spurred by the excitement of this idea, he doubled his pace, twisting skilfully in and out of the people who, unfired by love, moved more slowly on the crowded pavements.
On the few occasions in her life that Viola had been forced to spend Friday nights in a city, she had felt strangely depressed. As one brought up in the country, comforted by the rhythm of the seasons so apparent on the quiet coast where she lived with her family, she had always had a horror of Saturday mornings, and particularly Sunday afternoons, spent in parks or streets, neon-lit places, flats where time was of no consequence and Sunday lunch drifted into unnerving Sunday evening. To her, city weekends were wasted days. Even when, on leaving home, she had been forced to live in London during the week, she had always made the long journey back on Friday nights for the pleasure of two calm days on the earth, uncovered by concrete, that she loved. Given this strange quirk in her nature — which she did not bother to fight very hard — it was not surprising that here in New York, on a fine evening in May, Viola found herself dejected.
The airlessness of the theatre had given her a headache. Her limbs felt heavy, a sense of claustrophobia constrained her chest. In the mirrorless, stale lift that soughed up to her brother’s apartment, she longed for the wide emptiness of the beach at home. Shutting her eyes, she imagined it. She would be there, thank God, this time next week. She had had enough of New York.
Viola let herself into Hannah Bagle’s front door. Her brother Gideon had been living with Hannah since his arrival in New York, and having experienced just a week of Hannah’s company, Viola hoped Gideon was not contemplating marriage. Gideon and she had always respected each other’s private lives, and asked no questions. But in the case of Hannah Bagle, chief buyer in the nightwear department of a Fifth Avenue store, Viola felt apprehension on her brother’s behalf. He had been changed by his liberated lady in ways which Viola could not admire, and even at the risk of angering him, she felt she should give him some warning. She had been awaiting the right time: perhaps it would be this evening when, at last, they would have a few hours alone.
In the stark white box of a kitchen — lifeless and tidy as a show kitchen in a shop window — Viola poured herself a drink of iced orange juice. She took it into the bleached living-room — glass, carpet and furniture all white, flowerless pot plants and a few shelves of books the only apologetic colours. Hannah Bagle, as she often said, hated colour, and she had drained it not only from the place in which she lived and from her own wardrobe, but also from Gideon. He had worn a cream tie and, worse, cream socks, every day. Viola had laughed at the change in his once colourful appearance, remembering his purple socks and rainbow jerseys at Oxford. He had merely replied that Viola was, as usual, too critical.
Viola sat on the white linen sofa, put her glass of orange on the low perspex table beside her. It glowed unnaturally, a single flame in the pallor of the room. In the stifling silence she recalled the events of the day, which had been no more satisfactory than any of the other days in New York.
It had been a relief not to have had to go through the audition, which she would have failed without a doubt, and she would not have enjoyed being humiliated by Harry Antlers as the others had been. He had lived up to his reputation of being a man of exceptional rudeness: boorish, chippy, charmless — except for a few moments. And ugly. Quite outstandingly ugly. On reflection, Viola could not imagine why she had accepted his invitation to lunch, except that she had been hungry and did not like eating alone in drugstores. His flattering suggestion that she should do some rewrites on the play was a very silly one. She had no experience, merely what a single producer, some years ago, had assured her was a natural ear for dialogue. If Mr Antlers was serious, of course, then she would be prepared to try. But no. She would not. It would mean staying longer in New York and associating further with the disagreeable Harry. While all she wanted was to return home very quickly.
Oppressed by the white room, Viola was relieved to hear the key in the door. Gideon hurried in, strangely dressed in a caramel-coloured suit, white shirt and white tie. He was a tall, untidy man, clumsy and vague in some respects, infinitely skilful in others. There was a friendly clattering of ice as he poured himself a martini of American proportions. He flung himself upon a white chair, disturbing its etiolated cushions. His presence livened the room.
He smiled — what Viola used to call his front smile. While his face moved in adequate imitation of a grin, she said, the back of his mind, elsewhere, played no part in the gesture.
‘Had a good day?’
‘You’ve picked up so many American expressions.’
Gideon briefly shut his eyes, the smile gone. He had a fine, intelligent face: the temples and long nose identical to those of his father. A curved and sensuous mouth from his mother. When he was a child, and conversations bored him, he would shut his eyes for quite long spells. The habit would enrage his father. ‘I’m practising in case I go blind,’ Gideon would always say, shoving sausages skilfully into his mouth as his eyes screwed up with added defiance.
‘Well, did you? What happened at the audition?’
‘I didn’t even bother to go through with it. The director saw at once I was completely unsuitable for the part, and I told him I wasn’t interested anyway.’
‘After all the trouble your agent took. Won’t he be disappointed?’
‘I don’t think he cares very much.’
Gideon pushed off his shoes and wiggled his white-socked feet in the long white wool of the carpet.
‘So there’s nothing much to keep you in New York?’ ‘No. I’ll be going home on Monday.’
‘We’ll miss you.’
‘I think Hannah probably finds three rather too much in this flat, doesn’t she?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s quite easy.’
Viola judged this not to be the time to disagree. They sat in silence for a while, Gideon sipping at his martini.
‘I suppose we’d better talk about the house,’ he said at last.
‘That’s the idea.’
‘How on earth do you suppose you can keep it going on your own?’ His eyes, an opaque grey that he had inherited from no one, were suddenly tired and troubled.
‘It’ll be difficult, but I’ll manage.’ Even as she spoke Viola knew it would be impossible. The small amount of capital left by her father brought in an income that scarcely covered a frugal life of her own, but would not begin to cover the expenses of running a large and ailing house. Already she was in debt, although there were still a few hundred pounds left by her mother which would go towards outstanding bills.
Gideon sighed.
‘You won’t, you know.’ He lit a cigarette and smiled a proper smile. ‘It’s hard to know what to do. You’re the young sister and all that, but it’s difficult to take care of you —’
‘I’m quite all right, you know —’
‘Well, keep an eye on you, whatever. It’s hard with three thousand miles between us. And the parents would have considered it very unbrotherly to take no interest whatever, wouldn’t they?’
Viola smiled in reply.
‘And so, my Violetta, I’ve been thinking.’ Viola sensed a thin thread of excitement in her spine. Whenever, in their childhood, Gideon announced he had been thinking, it was usually because the time had come to announce a good idea. ‘I’ve been thinking, and I’ve changed my mind. About selling. Just yet, I mean. I don’t know at all what your life is, or what you want to do, or how long you will really want to hang about by yourself with all those ghosts: but I understand you not wanting to let it go. With the present state of the economy, it can’t be unwise to hang on to it for a while.’ He paused, taking in his sister’s face. ‘And, no, you won’t have to worry about the money. I’m making a ridiculous amount over here. I can take care of all that.’
‘Gideon.’
‘So you can organize getting the roof done as soon as you get back.’
‘Oh heavens. Thank you, Gid.’
‘Well, I’m not being entirely altruistic.’
‘You mean, one day, you might …?’
Gideon nodded. He held up his empty glass.
‘I shouldn’t be drinking this stuff for a start. Milk is doctor’s orders. I’ve got an ulcer. One gets ulcers, making so much money.’
Viola laughed.
‘Would you come back soon? And Hannah?’
‘A year or two, perhaps.’ He paused. ‘Hannah wouldn’t be keen on a change of environment.’
‘No.’
Gideon was mellow now for the first time during her stay in New York. As he curled his long legs under him on the sofa, indicating in some unspoken way that the comfortable position would not have been permitted in Hannah’s presence, for fear of the white socks blemishing the white covers, Viola was reminded of the long night hours he spent thus on the library sofa at home. In vacations from Oxford he would bring two or three friends to stay, and they would hardly appear by daylight, but come out at night with bottles of port to sustain their endless philosophical discussions. Viola, only understanding half they said, would listen but not join in. Now, recognizing the same mellowness of those evenings, she ventured an old joke.
‘Maisie’s still waiting in Docking,’ she said.
‘Ah, Maisie! Is she still the same shape?’
‘She’s thinner, I’ve heard, in memory of you.’
‘Dear fat obliging Maisie. Maybe I shall be bound to look her up one day. But you, Violetta, what about you? You never write real news. Any plans? Isn’t it about time you settled down? Babies and all that. Who’s been in your life of late?’
‘Brief visitations. No more.’
‘You’d be quite hard to love, I suppose.’
‘Thank you!’
‘By that I mean merely that it would take a lot of perseverance to see the point of you. Once somebody had, of course, they’d never let you go.’
They both laughed. The whiteness of the room was less alien now. Outside Viola could see pink clouds with underskirts of silver. They cast blue shadows on the floor.
Gideon stood up, stretching, huge.
‘Hannah rang me to say she was going to be so late we should get ourselves some food. Shall we go down to the Village and eat raw fish in a Japanese restaurant? Hannah hates it.
But that would be nice, Letta, wouldn’t it?’
‘Wonderful,’ said Viola, gulping her forgotten orange juice. She knew that for the first time in New York she would enjoy her evening.