14

The knock on the dressing room door of the London theater came just as Nathan Fitzgerald was leaving.

“There’s a woman to see you.” It was one of the front-of-house girls, still in her black uniform, with a coat thrown over it.

“I’ve seen them all,” he said.

She grinned at him. He shut his door after him, slinging the rucksack over his back. He was always the last of the cast to leave, and tonight had been no different. Nathan had been interviewed for The Evening Standard while he lay on his back with his feet propped on the dressing room wall, the only comfortable position for a back that ached fiercely after every performance. He winced now, and the girl walking alongside him glanced at him.

“Still a problem?”

“Bloody chiropractor’s no good at all,” he complained.

“You shouldn’t throw yourself around the stage, maybe,” she observed. “Or anywhere else.” They came out onto the stairs. The girl started down them, but pointed to the entrance to the stalls as she did so. “She’s in there and won’t leave,” she said. “You’d better hurry up, Webster’s wanting to shut up shop.”

Nathan sighed. “Who is it, anyway?” he asked. “Has she got a name?”

“Brigham,” the girl said, over her shoulder. “Helen Brigham.”

He tried to remember, as he walked toward her, how long it was since he had seen her.

Maybe three weeks. Maybe four.

She was sitting near the front, her knees drawn up onto the seat, her large black velvet coat wrapped around her. She looked fragile. A small, thin body and a childlike face. She had cut her hair; it was cropped and spiky, and only added to her air of edgy vulnerability.

He deliberately didn’t sit alongside her. Instead, he walked along the row in front and took the seat slightly to one side, and turned his body around so that he was facing her.

“I’m here,” she said. “You told me not to come, but I did anyway.”

“It’s OK,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to keep away forever.”

She looked at him. “Didn’t you?” she asked.

He avoided the question. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said. It was her standard response. She was always fine, even when in the throes of one of her moods. He studied her now, trying to gauge what state of mind she was in.

“Did you see the show?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I think I’ve seen it enough.”

When they had been together, she had come often, sometimes seeing the whole show, or part of it. Sometimes standing in the wings, which he had tried to discourage, as he could feel her gaze.

“We’ve got another Daniel,” he said, naming a character.

“So I hear. Is he any good?”

“Yes.”

“Be taking the shine from you,” she said.

“Nothing can do that.”

She smiled. “Oh,” she said. “That’s right. I forgot. You’re an actor.”

There was a silence.

“How are you really?” he asked.

She looked to the stage. “I got fired,” she said.

“What? When?”

“Today.”

“Oh, shit,” he sympathized. “How did that happen?”

She pulled the coat tighter across her. “I’m not allowed to have any opinion at all,” she said. “And this … this Price.”

“Price is directing?”

“Yes.”

He had seen her tears many times; he almost could grade them according to authenticity. But this seemed sudden and real; she put her hand over her mouth, then both over her face.

He reached out and touched her knee. “It’s a misunderstanding, surely.”

“No,” she said, still from behind her hands. “No.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the manager, Webster, come to the door and signal him that he was shutting down the lights.

“Listen,” Nathan said. “Come outside with me a minute.”

She carried on sobbing, childlike snuffles that now, he guessed, were probably deliberately prolonged. He patted her knee. “Up you get,” he said. “Webster wants to go home to his cocoa, and so do I.”

She appeared from behind the hands. “You don’t like cocoa,” she muttered with a comic sad smile.

“Then we’ll go to the Metro,” he said.

She stood up almost immediately, the smile widening. She followed him to the edge of the row and linked his arm. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

His heart fell about a hundred feet into an abyss.

The Metro was crowded.

Several people smiled when they saw him, then their gaze went to Helen and back again to his face. They were given a table facing into the body of the restaurant. Helen shuffled along the bench seat and wriggled out of the coat, looking around her. She seemed very pleased to be noticed with him, he saw.

“I’m not going to eat,” he said.

“Oh,” she remarked. “Just something.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said. “If you must know, I’m very tired, Helen. I really do have to go home in a minute.”

She looked at the menu, then dropped it to the table. “We’ve only just walked through the door and already you’re telling me that you have to go,” she said.

“OK,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. But I’m not hungry. You have something.”

She did. She ordered a glass of wine and the Italian plate. He hid his frown. He knew it was a code; he knew her. They had been to Italy at Christmas, to Florence. He had hated it. He didn’t like galleries. He didn’t like churches. But she insisted; she even had a little notebook and camera. Research. She had been there before, as a student. She kept talking about paintings and how much, how intimately, she understood them. It was in Florence that he had known for sure that he could not bear to be with her anymore, and it had been sad, very sad, to be with her, with all her enthusiasm, taking the notes and the photographs, and to know that he would soon tell her that he was leaving her.

It had been her idea that they live together. He had always resisted it. She had talked about it almost from the first moment they met, and she could be very persuasive. My God, persuasive wasn’t in it. She could be exhausting, monopolizing him. Very sexy at first. Very wearing, very boring after the first two months. And the moods.

Then he had lost his shared apartment. He took advantage of her, he could see that. But the realization of having used her to avoid looking for anywhere else was not a very appealing character trait, so he had tried to ignore it. But in Florence, he knew. He knew that there was no way he could spend any more time with her.

She had made plans. She was good at that. Good at organizing. That was her job, she would point out to him, laughing.

And so she organized everything; the holidays they had together, and the weekends. She was alarmingly generous and he had thought that she must have some sort of private money. They went to Paris. They went to Crete and Sardinia. She booked them a long weekend at a place in Cornwall and tried to teach him to sail. She had been adamant about it. “You’ll sail and look like those thirties film stars,” she had told him. “It’s amazingly good for the image, Nathan. Think about it. Outdoor guy, blue sea.”

But he wasn’t a sailor. He wasn’t anything, it seemed to him, that she wanted him to be. He was an actor, but he wasn’t literary, and he didn’t like art, and he wanted to be down at the pub and perhaps go running with the two mates he had shared the flat with.

“I’m an ordinary person,” he would tell her.

She had just laughed. “You’re an extraordinary person,” she would correct him. And she would wave a newspaper at him. “It says so here in the reviews.”

“I’m an extraordinary actor,” he quoted. “But I’m just a bloke. Don’t make me something I’m not.”

“You won’t make a name for yourself propping up the bar in the Mile End road.”

“I don’t want a name for myself,” he had told her. “I’m not some superannuated grandee of the bloody West End. I’m twenty-six.”

“You’re lying,” she had retorted. “All actors are egotists.”

Perhaps she was right, and the man-of-the-people was a name tag he wore, but he didn’t want to go to showbiz parties or stand around the Royal Academy at the Summer Show pretending that he knew his arse from his elbow.

“Look,” he said one day as they lay in bed, “you’ve got to understand this. I’m a boy from Salford. That’s what I am.”

“And that’s what you want to be all your life?” she had replied, tauntingly, smiling.

“Yes,” he had told her as he got out of bed.

He looked at her now.

“What have you been doing with yourself these last few weeks?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Working.”

“With Price.”

“For him. Much good it’s done me.”

“There’ll be another job.”

To his horror, she began to cry again. “There won’t be another job,” she said. “No one will take me.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re just depressed over—” he realized what he’d said as soon as it was out of his mouth, but it was too late.

“I’ve got a good reason to be depressed, haven’t I?” she demanded. “You walk out on me …”

He couldn’t deny it. He had told her the moment they got back from Florence. In fact, just to lessen the tension on himself—selfishness, selfishness—they had barely put their bags on the floor of her flat before he told her that he was going. He just couldn’t see the logic in unpacking his case only to have to repack it in the same week.

“Going?” she had echoed. “Going where?”

Of course he was sorry. But it had never been a long-term relationship as far as he was concerned. He was stupid enough, cruel enough, to tell her so.

“Why?” she had said, sinking to a chair. “Why?”

Because she was so helplessly clinging. Because she never woke up in the same mood. Because he was forever guessing what he had done that day to upset her. Because she would sometimes sing all day, or cry all day. Because she wanted, planned, visualized a future with the full entourage—the children, the admiring friends, the fawning fans, the full celebrity couple status. Because other people, who had known her longer than he had, told him that she was crazy. And they were right. Because she wanted to suck out his bloody soul with her questions. Because he wanted to breathe again, and not be looking over his shoulder, afraid she was at his back, watching him.

But he didn’t tell her that.

“I’m not ready,” he had said, eventually, “for everything you want.”

“I’ll change,” she had offered. “I’ll change.”

She had held his hand tightly as he tried to get out of the door.

“I’ll ring you tonight,” he lied:

“Meet me tomorrow.” She was clutching at his arm, his hand.

“I will,” he said.

But he didn’t. For two weeks, he ignored all her calls and e-mail messages and texts. Then he saw her by accident at the Royal Festival Hall. He had gone in to meet someone, a woman. Helen was just coming out of the bookstore. She stared at him and then made a little waving motion with one hand. He had turned away.

The food was delivered to the table.

She didn’t touch it, just sat looking at it.

“I’m leaving the show in three weeks,” he told her.

She glanced up at him. “You are?”

“I’ve got an offer in New York.”

There was a second’s pause. “Doing …”

“Doing the same play.”

“On Broadway?”

“Yes.”

It was hard to hide his excitement. He didn’t mean to hurt her. As she looked at him, he knew in that instant that she had come back to him to try again. And, in the same second, it came to her that they would never be together. He saw a flash of some complicated, strange emotion pass over her face.

“Perhaps I should come to New York, too,” she said brightly. “A new start. Perhaps they would like me over there.”

He waited a beat. “Helen,” he said.

She stood up. Her eyes were full of tears; one hand was laid across her stomach. Then she leaned down, kissed him on the cheek, and snatched up her coat.

He had a sudden, horrible misgiving, a premonition. “Why did you come tonight?” he asked. “Specifically, tonight?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied.

“But where are you going?”

She started to put on her coat. A girl at the next table glanced at them both and smiled behind her hand, and Helen saw the smile. She froze for a second, and then continued, eyes downcast, movements fumbled. “I think I will have a holiday for a while,” she said. “I think I will go and see my brother.”

And she nodded to herself, turned away, and went out of the door without once looking back at him.