Six

It was two in the afternoon of the following day that Edith Channon called up the stairs.

‘Lin! You have a visitor!’

Four flights above, the door opened, and Lin’s footsteps could be heard on the landing. ‘Who is it?’ she replied.

‘She asks who it is, the bitch,’ Ben Lazenby said.

The elderly woman recoiled, frowning at him.

‘She’s done it deliberately,’ he muttered, then walked up the first flight. ‘Is there any bloody end to this?’ he shouted.

Edith could hear Lin laughing. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘I’ll come down.’

‘No, no, no,’ Ben muttered. ‘I’m halfway to a heart attack, so why stop me now?’

Edith watched the enormous frame of Lazenby retreat upwards. Clicking her tongue in disapproval, she went back into the shop and closed the connecting door.

Emerging on the landing by the entrance to Lin’s flat, Lazenby did in fact look as if he were in danger of a seizure. He was six foot three, on the downside of sixty, florid-faced, and with the expression of an exhausted bulldog. Lin stepped forward to kiss him.

‘For God’s sake, a seat and a drink,’ he said.

They went into Lin’s flat.

‘What is it, half a mile up that hill?’ he rumbled on. ‘No bloody place to park, I’m coming down with something, I’ve got sinus trouble or something, like a band around my fucking head, and I have to walk four miles from a car park—two pounds an hour, two pounds an hour—up a hill and then sixteen flights of stairs in the Hammer House of Horrors. What d’you call this? Who’s she downstairs? Place out of the fourteenth-century, dolls looking at you. Do you know what she’s doing down there? Putting in a tongue. A fucking tongue!’

Lin was laughing. Lazenby had flopped onto her only armchair.

‘Tea?’ she asked. She went to the sink in the corner and ran the water. The pipes clanged briefly in the wall.

‘Horrors,’ Lazenby repeated. ‘Where is he?’

‘Where is who?’

‘Theophilus the mighty.’

She cocked her head towards the bedroom. ‘He sleeps for an hour in the afternoon.’

Lazenby looked around at the floor littered with toys, a large jigsaw on a coffee table under the window, and Lin’s laptop on the dining table, with a view from the window of the slate roofs across the narrow street.

‘My sweet girl,’ he said. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here? You look like death.’

Lin didn’t reply for a moment. Then she smiled, murmuring, ‘Thanks.’ Carefully and slowly, she laid a tray with cups and saucers. ‘I’ve only got malt loaf,’ she said.

‘Ah, God.’

‘I’m sorry. Theo loves it.’

‘Never mind, darling. I had lunch at the Gill. Do you know it? Just outside town.’

Lin turned back to him, smiling. ‘How do you find the best restaurants when you’ve never lived here?’

He raised an admonishing finger. ‘Ah, but I have,’ he said. ‘In another life I spent eight months here doing costume design.’

She was genuinely surprised. ‘You did?’

‘When I was young and fit, in another century,’ he said. ‘It had no hills then.’

She laughed again. She brought the tray over, and handed him a cup of tea. ‘Where is Marianne?’ she asked.

‘Forty miles away, receiving the sympathy of her father.’

Lin wasn’t surprised. Ben always had young girlfriends, and he never got on with their parents. Lazenby watched Lin pour, his face set in a concentrated expression of concern.

‘Lindsay,’ he said at last, ‘what are you doing here?’

She sat back on her heels and looked up at him.

‘Have you left the great man?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘What, then? A sabbatical? Do they allow that in marriage? Time off for bad behaviour?’

‘No, no. I …’ She adjusted herself to sit cross-legged. ‘Harry rang me last night. How did he know where I was?’

Lazenby shrugged.

Lin sighed. ‘I couldn’t stay in the house another day,’ she said. She picked at a thread on her skirt. ‘I suppose that makes me certifiable.’

Lazenby put the cup down. ‘Well, you know my theory on country houses,’ he said. ‘One goes there to die for the WI.’ He sat back, lacing his hands across an ample stomach. ‘The people I’ve known buy a longhouse in Suffolk, then come screaming back to London within six months. Tractors! I mean, one knows they’re necessary …’

‘It wasn’t the country,’ Lin said. ‘And it wasn’t the house.’

Lazenby stared at her.

‘How is he?’ she asked.

‘As usual,’ Lazenby said.

‘When did you leave Cyprus?’

‘A week ago. I had things to do.’

‘Was he all right?’

Lazenby momentarily closed his eyes. ‘Chérie, you and I, you and I …’ He opened his eyes again. ‘I wonder what we did in our last life to deserve him.’

To say that Lazenby did not like Kieran would have been a massive understatement. Ben hated Kieran’s good looks—those of a weary, slightly soiled angel. He resented the air of knowingness that Kieran made his own. Ben also, unfortunately for the theme of the programme, hated academia being stuffed in his face when he only had two CSEs to parry with. Most of all he hated the photograph of Kieran that hung in Channel 12’s foyer. He had never been more thrilled than when, at a party just before Christmas, he had heard Kieran described as possessing ‘fading chambray allure’. Despite being the producer of Kieran’s programme, he had rung Harry immediately to tell him that. More than once he had asked Harry to persuade Lin to come in on one or two scenes, citing her looks, her off-the-wall humour.

Lin watched his face. ‘Is it that bad?’

‘Bloody pre-menstrual vindictiveness. He treated Malcolm on the crew as if he were something that had adhered to his shoe.’

‘Oh, God,’ Lin sighed.

‘No good here, won’t stand there, this slope too steep, this not the right ambience, this not indicative of period—this whitewash too fucking white, if you please …’

‘He’s a perfectionist,’ she murmured.

Lazenby sat forward. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not it. I’ve worked with perfectionists all my life. Shall I tell you what’s at the heart of this? Anxiety. He’s not sure—for all his star status.’

Lin looked down, away.

‘What is it with the two of you?’

‘He’s so remote,’ Lin replied. ‘I don’t think he likes television, Ben.’

‘He was damned enthusiastic enough four years ago.’

‘Well … times change. Maybe I pushed him. He seemed so much in a rut.’ She bit her lip. ‘But maybe he liked his oblivion with Ruth. Maybe that’s what’s happening now—wanting to go back.’

‘What do they say about him at the university?’ Lazenby asked.

Lin said nothing.

‘Besides their hating him, naturally.’

With deliberate slowness, Lin lifted her cup and drank.

‘You are a loyal girl,’ Lazenby said.

‘He’s very clever,’ she responded.

‘Like shit,’ Lazenby said.

She flashed him a look, saw he was smiling rather sadly at her.

‘Lin, how old are you?’ he asked.

‘What is that to do with anything?’ she asked, smiling too, with something of the same slightly mournful quality. ‘I’m a hundred and six.’

‘How old?’

‘Why?’

‘Stuck up here with his son.’

‘I’m twenty-four.’

‘If you hadn’t met him, what would you be doing now?’

‘Oh, Christ … a postgraduate course.’ She put down her cup. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she contradicted herself. ‘I’d be in Nepal, or a chicken-gutting factory, or prison.’

‘Of course. And how do you suppose that would happen?’

‘Because I don’t stick at anything,’ she said.

‘Except Mr Gallagher.’

‘Ah … yes.’

‘You have a brilliant mind,’ Ben said, ‘an analytical mind, a creative mind. You can write, you do his research, you see the most extraordinary tangents. I have climbed this medieval Everest to tell you I would much prefer to have you on the screen than your husband. I come, in fact, upon a white charger—you don’t see him? I have a sword in my hand—’

‘Ben …’

‘Actually a chequebook. Actually a contract.’

‘What?’

‘Actually no. I have no chequebook and I have no contract, but I will. I could. I shall. I am tired of the star, darling. This comet with his cloud of dust. And if you are leaving him, you must not leave me, my clever girl—’

‘I’m not leaving him,’ she said.

‘Are you not?’ he replied.

They stared at each other.

‘Dear girl,’ Ben said.

She shifted backwards on the carpet, to take herself out of his reach. ‘Please don’t be kind,’ she said. ‘I’ll start crying, and you’ll be sorry.’

He looked at her with compassion. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘Why now? Why this?’

‘Ruth,’ she murmured, taking his offered handkerchief. She blew her nose, and offered it back.

‘Keep it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry …’

‘No, darling, please do hawk into my possessions freely.’

She actually managed to laugh.

‘And Ruth?’ he asked.

‘She comes into the house. She thinks it’s still hers.’

‘Oh, lovely. There’s normal for you.’

‘Kieran is very fond of her.’

‘Is he having an affair with her?’

‘No, no … but he’s … they never quite broke that bond. I am the interloper.’

‘You are his wife.’

‘I’m …’ She paused. ‘What am I? The second one. The younger one.’

‘And she comes around uninvited?’

‘She rings, too, more and more often. For nothing. Almost like a raincheck. These strange, going-nowhere conversations. What am I doing with Theo? Is Theo well? The weather …’

‘Is she lonely?’

Lin eyed him acutely. ‘I don’t know. She’s frantically busy, supposedly.’

‘Isn’t she older than you both?’

‘Yes, much. Years older than me.’

There was a pause. For all his concern for Lin, Lazenby found it hard to stray from the subject of work, which was his main preoccupation. ‘You know that he’s threatening not to do another series?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Has he told you why?’

‘No. He just criticizes the scripts.’

‘Which you prepare, for no payment.’

‘I’m happy to help him.’

Lazenby leant forward, and pointed a finger at her. ‘That’s a very unprofessional attitude. You are wickedly naïve. It’s a fault. A flaw.’

She said nothing.

In the bedroom, Theo began to stir. Lin stood up, looking towards the door.

Lazenby caught hold of her wrist. ‘Get back to your house and change the locks. Drive the mad old bag away,’ he said.

‘I can’t do any of that without Kieran’s support,’ she told him. ‘I was hoping this would shock him into doing something.’

‘And will it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really rationalize. I just had to get out that day, and I thought he would—’

‘Get on a plane? Send in the SWAT team? Hang her out to dry?’

‘Yes. Something dramatic like that. Some big gesture—this once.’

‘Listen,’ Lazenby said. ‘Get back to the house. You are entitled to half of it. Start thinking about your career. And I don’t mean a career as Gallagher’s skivvy.’

She eyed him steadily. ‘Does he ever talk to you about Ruth?’ she asked. ‘When he’s away from home?’

Lazenby returned her look. ‘He doesn’t confide in me, love.’

‘That’s it,’ she murmured, turning away. ‘Love.’

He watched her weary walk to the bedroom door. ‘Blind,’ he replied. ‘So they say.’