3

London, 1975

Celia had been eight months in Rome, including the summer holiday with Marcia. Following their trip south Marcia returned to London while Celia looked for further set designing in Cinecittà. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find a long-term job, with talk of illegal foreigners working in cinema. She grew restless and homesick for London – where she was still a specialist in nothing, yet would be offered, and take on, any kind of theatre work.

Some weeks after Marcia’s departure, she sat at her kitchen window one day and thought it out. What did she miss most, living in this incomparable city of Rome where the sun sparkled on the umbrella trees? She missed speaking her own language with friends. Not only that: she hankered sometimes for the culture of repartee and possibilities in the West End. The cut and thrust banter so different from the slick cinematic scene here, where she provided original sets for stuck-up little starlets who would be nonentities before the decade was out, and busy directors who accepted her designs as a matter of course. Italy took artistry and beauty as its deserved mistresses.

Celia wasn’t by any means ignored: men liked her and frequently tried to bed her. There was a good-looking screen writer called Roberto whom she had been friendly with for some time. He had lived in Glasgow for several years and spoke his English with a trilled Scots cadence that made Celia smile. With him it was true she did enjoy a certain verbal sparring. One evening he asked her out for a drink after work. For an Italian, this meant exactly that, she’d found, then probably dinner. Then, who knows? What she liked about this city was that people didn’t go out to swill endless drinks where you ended up losing your appetite for food.

They left the bar with him suggesting they find a place to eat, but she said she was ready to call it a day. He good-naturedly drove her home where he somehow charmed his way into her flat and immediately drew her to him and started kissing her with such ardour that she knew her face would be inflamed for the next twenty-four hours from his end-of-the-day stubble. She was aroused, but soon pulled away.

‘That’s enough, I didn’t invite this, Roberto. Please, that’s enough.’ And she gave his chest a gentle but firm push. How had she got herself into this absurd situation? She wanted only to be alone, to pull apart her misapprehension, see where it had all gone astray. Somewhat to her surprise he was now cast into a slow anger.

‘You respond so far, then push me away. What is it? It seems to me you’re a fatally chaste woman, Celia.’ And he turned his back on her. He’s like a child, she thought.

‘No one dies of chastity, Roberto.’

She stopped herself from clicking her tongue. It couldn’t be left like this; he was essentially a nice man.

‘Put it this way: I’m a rather difficult woman – I know that. Probably you could say, one of life’s onlookers, destined to be abstemious.’

But he wasn’t stupid. ‘You’re not merely an onlooker; I’ve seen the involvement … the passion in your face when you hear music, watch films.’ Had he been observing her these past months?

He went on: ‘Abstemious is hardly the word for you. Not in the way of drinking. Or eating. You have appetites like the rest of us. I think you should have the courage to say that you don’t like me, though your kissing suggests otherwise. Or else you are neurotically inclined to reject any man as soon as he takes an interest in you.’

Now that was uncannily shrewd of him: she searched for the right answer.

‘Unless you’re a lesbian. Are you a lesbian? Exclusive to your own gender rather than following your inclinations? There has to be a reason for your behaviour.’

‘My behaviour. Oh God, is this the way you carry on with every woman who doesn’t want to go to bed with you? Now I’m really getting bored with this conversation.’

As she finished this sentence her phone rang. It was Mickey, calling from London with his knack of good timing. She asked him to wait, still looking at Roberto with an expression on her face that felt half-annoyed and more than a little apologetic. He raised his hands, palms towards her in a gesture of appeasement and nodded, opened the door and quietly closed it behind him.

‘Have I interrupted something?’

‘No, I was just talking to a man who has now left.’

‘Let me guess: you were in the act of giving him his marching orders. And my call is fortuitous, am I right?’

‘Not as brutal as that, but I did handle it badly.’

‘You sound a bit down, Celia love. Is everything else all right?’

Was it? Maybe not. Her job was connected to her work permit and about to run out in two weeks. She could probably find something else but it wouldn’t necessarily be easy, and now she had cruelled her pitch with Roberto. He might have had a couple of ideas if she’d had the tact not to insult him. She explained this to Mickey and didn’t disguise her part.

All is not lost, he consoled her, with that buoyancy in his voice she liked to hear. There was, it turned out, a job going in a Shaftesbury Avenue production, cueing actors. Not only that, coming up was maybe an opening as a répétiteur for an actor who increasingly needed a little help in remembering his lines. Not long-term, mind – but …

‘Well. Are you telepathic, or what?’

He laughed as if to himself. ‘Come back to us, Celia. Italy will still be there later.’

She considered the proposal for a few short seconds. ‘I’ll be there, end of next week.’

Marcia was between jobs, having a lean time getting parts. But she always found something. For the time being she was doing a tea advertisement for ITV. This involved lifting a cup of tea in the air, saucer in her left hand while she smiled impishly, knowingly, at the viewer, as if they were both in on this truth: ‘Richer Lanka Tea’ she murmured to the music, and almost winked before taking a sip. The ad went down well as sales went up. Whenever it came on the telly Celia and Mickey hooted and Marcia’s shoulders shook as she gave her short breath intake that did for a laugh. Marcia always bided her time, as if she knew fate had her in mind for the next thing. And proving her right, a few weeks after the ad job she landed a part in a touring company, playing Portia’s waiting-maid Nerissa for two months in The Merchant of Venice. Not only that, she was at the same time understudying for Portia’s part. Possibilities, possibilities, said Mickey like a sage.

‘If I’d wanted a regular, steady job I’d have trained as a postal clerk,’ she smiled.

As for Celia’s return to London, the play she was to work on folded. She finished up working as wardrobe mistress for a ballet company in Wimbledon. And though Mickey’s enterprise had fallen through he remained undeterred: he stuck to seeing his role now as an impresario.

‘Success is moving from one failure to another without any loss of enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘Winston Churchill!’

‘As long as we don’t have to dodge bombs before you get a lucky break,’ said Celia.

But soon after he brought off a coup, promoting several of the more esoteric acts to town, mainly for the daring audiences who would risk a hefty price ticket to see what promised to be exotic. Londoners, despite their closed-looking faces, Mickey said, want to be enraptured. And he proved that by organising a show of Patagonian flutes and Zambian drum ensembles in a north London venue. Indeed a sizeable crowd assembled at a crumbling warehouse and clapped their hands red, cheered themselves hoarse at this strange music.

The three friends afterwards had a congratulatory drink, standing around the kitchen table. Marcia and Celia agreed that Mickey’s talents were clearly manifested in behind-the-scenes negotiation with artists rather than onstage directing.

‘Good on you Mick!’ said Celia, giving him a quick hug.

‘There’s more to come,’ cried Mickey, all flushed and vindicated.

Not long afterwards, on an unusually warm night when the sky above Kensington was pink and Marcia was up north playing Portia, Celia accompanied Mickey (‘my consort’) to another musical evening. This was a celebrated flamenco/ classical guitarist with two support singer/maracas players, whom he had been able to place in the West End. The chief musician was wowing the audience. Afterwards Mickey and Celia went backstage and joined the merry throng who were drinking and praising the tired and sweaty star. The man’s eyes rested on Celia with a soft glow as he bent his head over her fingers. Perhaps they could go somewhere for a quiet glass of wine?

Oh, she had loved the music, she smiled, a virtuosic performance, and they would of course come again but as it happened, tonight she had another engagement. The man’s face lengthened and his eyes grew sad as Mickey made their excuses with much back-patting and reassurance of future concerts.

‘Say, Celia – going for a drink with him wouldn’t have hurt,’ he reproached her, as he hailed a taxi.

‘Excuse me? I’m not here to act as the extra sweetener!’

‘No, no pet. It wasn’t meant like that. Indeed I think you swing the other way, if only you knew it.’

‘Oh, do me a favour.’

‘But the way he was looking at you! And what a performer, surely you agree?’

She shivered a little in the night air. ‘Of course he’s good. And I don’t mind the dishevelled hair and the motley gear they wear.’ They stepped into the cab. ‘And I do like the hand-kissing.’

‘But?’

‘But … the body odour, for one thing. And it’s always there, I’d bet, not just a nervous post-concert relief.’

‘Ah, he’s not the most aromatic muso around,’ said Mickey, always reluctant to see fault. ‘But he’s a nice fella, surely he’d make a good lover for some nice lady!’

‘Count me out,’ said Celia.

‘Hey, look at his mastery,’ said Mickey. ‘Consider the finger work.’ Even in the dark of the taxi she could see his grin as he lightly brushed his hand on her thigh, then left it there.

She dug him hard in the ribs. ‘Try not to be foul.’

‘Ouch! My God, you’re a terrible woman – not a romantic fibre in you.’

‘Keep your bloody hands to yourself. What about fidelity?’

‘Oh now, Marcia wouldn’t mind; no one’s made any promises here. And she’s far away.’ Now he was teasing her. ‘But really, Marcia wouldn’t see any disloyalty in it.’ He was facing her but she looked out of the window.

They sat in silence, and she felt her eyes stinging. Why did she feel she had to give explanations. It was he who was being obtuse. And unfaithful.

‘I don’t want to act more foolishly than I can help. Loneliness could force mistakes on me.’ Her face was frozen into forlornness. ‘I’m not always as nice as I seem.’

‘For the love of God, who thinks you’re nice?’

This made her smile. ‘I mean, there are things about me you don’t know.’

‘But I can guess.’ A stillness hung there between them, until he said with complete sympathy, ‘It’s all right, darlin’, whatever you say.’ His warm hand now holding hers, the sweetness of his expression in the darkened cab.

Whenever someone gave in like that was the moment she weakened. He caught the current of it and, the cab driver paid outside the house, he leapt up the steps to the front door while she followed more slowly.

A few nights later at dinner when all three of them were home, she said to him: ‘You’re doing well. With this spate of the South American stuff.’ Marcia, returned from up north, was cooking. ‘Maybe something out-of-the-ordinary is what people want to hear.’

‘It’s a bored demographic we’re pulling in. People tire of the old pop and blues – new trends are what they want now.’ Mickey was sitting with legs outstretched, smoking a small black cigar, a new pose, and a brand-new kind of blarney. Marcia turned to Celia and smiled.

‘Boredom,’ said Celia. ‘The scourge of the middle class. What bizarre thing will it be next, the Antarctic Symphony Orchestra? I can see them now…’

‘Playing with their ear muffs on,’ Mickey took it up, topping up all drinks, going to the kitchen bench to place a kiss on Marcia’s forehead.

‘Adjusting their Ugg boots, the fiddle players taking off their gloves for that extra-delicate solo piece,’ said Marcia.

‘The plucking of the strings,’ Celia added.

She had noticed his little attention to Marcia. Everything was all right, God in her heaven.

Of the three of them it was Celia who felt more sharply the impact of their highs and lows, the comings and goings, wild times and unmet hopes. As long as Marcia and Mickey were not just mucking around with her as she tagged along, the two stars in the firmament and she a duller glow. What an unworthy thought: they weren’t stars, to begin with, and neither of them would have entertained the idea.

Celia knew the very moment when she’d recognised her love for Marcia. They were listening to an exceptional violinist playing Beethoven’s Spring Sonata and she had looked up and seen on Marcia’s face a passing ecstasy running parallel with her own. Marcia felt it and smiled. There seemed no point in uttering what they both knew: that a satisfied carnal love, either with a man or a woman, wasn’t within Celia’s domain. Not really. There were probably millions of people like that in the world. Her rapture was in music, theatre, reading books.

This alliance with Marcia, this tacit understanding with someone who was more than a flatmate, thought Celia, wasn’t without a hint of jealousy on her own part.

Years later she realised this trait, ruinous she called it, that explained the later episode where she denied Mickey – in the biblical sense, when Peter denied Jesus – and sealed her own fate.

The bedroom cavorting with Mickey after their ride in the taxi that evening, both of them semi-inebriated and inept, was an aberration for her, and nothing memorable came of that. Her betrayal on another occasion – as she saw it – was something more serious; it was not premeditated yet the opportunity presented itself and she didn’t let it pass. Like many shabby little deceits it was done in an oblique way, so that she couldn’t be brought to book. It happened like this:

She arrived at a party, her second of the evening, where the theatrical agent, Albie Duxton, one of the most influential men in London theatre and show business, buttonholed her, figuratively speaking, and in the most humorous way. More like gained her attention with his eyebrows.

Albie, polite to everyone, had always greeted her with just a word or two. Indeed in her company he was acutely awkward and seemed unable to find any words to put to her. This lack of ease, she thought, was what made the rest of the world call them reserved or cold. It felt like extreme shyness to her.

But with a good glass of Scotch in his hand he was far from dumbstruck this evening. Celia, enjoying her wine and looking for something to say fell back on the weather, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder towards the door. ‘It’s absolutely bloody out there.’

‘Bucketing down, is it?’ he replied, smiling.

‘Fairly pissing, it is.’

‘Throwing it down.’

‘So many verbs, so little respite.’

They laughed together and she looked directly at him, no wiles about it, as she whisked another drink from a passing tray. He had a way of speaking, not upper class, more slightly camp – though she had heard he certainly wasn’t. This new-found, bantering normality he now evinced wasn’t just, she suspected, the calming effect of the whisky but the realisation that he had no hope with her. He had now relaxed into his usual kind and amusing self.

‘I’m thinking of taking Mickey on for an upcoming production.’ He sipped his drink, looking back at her; or rather looking her up and down, though in an English, subtle sort of way, she thought. ‘I need a good script-writer,’ he said, ‘one who knows about directing. What do you think, Celia? Where is Mickey, anyway?’

She lifted her chin high, a habit developed when she’d had a little too much to drink. Marcia and Mickey had gone off to Scotland without her. True, she had the wardrobe assistant job to do for this season but they had assumed that she wouldn’t throw it in to go with them.

Excitement or desperation, something, had taken over and she’d blithely accepted yet another glass of red wine from Albie. Not only would she wake up with a hangover, she wouldn’t even be able to get to sleep. There was already a niggling pain and as usual it was settling itself like a wilful beast, at her left temple. It throbbed like a bullet – or a tumour? Please God, don’t let it be that. This dull ache often appeared now and then. And headaches are an indication of a malignancy, aren’t they? She moved her lips about in mock thought, making Albie laugh, and said:

‘He’s been busy organising events rather than directing. Actually I don’t know where he is – somewhere up in Scotland, I think.’

Not for some time had she felt so suddenly drunk; she was aware of an invisible tap on the shoulder. That would be Bacchus, reminding her to cease forthwith.

‘Are you all right, Celia?’ said Albie.

She looked around at a table and took a sausage roll between two fingers.

‘Excellent, me old cock.’ Where were the good days gone, she wanted to know, looking at Albie and feeling unaccountably abandoned. When had it been that everyone was on her side? Rare self-pity was hovering. Perhaps she and Albie … no. He saw the thought and how she brushed it aside. Smiling, he patted her shoulder and told her to take care, as someone approached them, clearly wanting his attention.

She got home from the party, took two strong painkillers, drank a couple of large mugs of water and lay waiting for her head to ease, all the while breathing slowly and rhythmically. Reluctantly the ache receded. Odd, that decent men genuinely liked her. When Marcia had finished her tour, Celia decided, she would lure Marse back to Calabria, in September.