Sitting by Winston in the half-empty cinema through that extraordinary film, Shirley was aware of his excitement. He hooted with laughter at a clip of Baldwin replying to a fat Irish critic: ‘You are black, impoverished, homosexual – you must have said to yourself, Gee, how disadvantaged can I get?’ ‘No, I thought I’d hit the jackpot.’ Winston laughed so loud that other people turned round. But later she was almost certain he was crying. Or perhaps he just had early hay fever.
At the end of the film, he put his arm round her shoulders. ‘I loved it,’ she said to him, before he could speak. ‘You know I don’t read. But I want to read him.’
‘I’ll lend you Giovanni’s Room,’ he said. ‘Shirley, you’re a special lady.’
He was half-bending over her under the light between the cinema exit and the foyer when Thomas Lovell bumped into them, obviously half-blinded from the dark inside, because he practically pushed between them.
‘Hey, Thomas,’ Shirley said. ‘This is Winston – Thomas Lovell.’
‘Hi,’ said Winston. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
For some reason Thomas hardly smiled. Could he be jealous? Surely not. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘I see you in the library.’ He was noticeably slow taking Winston’s outstretched hand.
‘Winston and I were going to get a coffee. Would you like to –?’
‘I’ve got work to do –’ Then he seemed to change his mind, and stood there, frowning. ‘So what did you think of the film?’ he asked her.
‘It made me cry,’ Shirley said. ‘I thought that Baldwin was – wonderful.’
(She knew she would never be able to explain it, but everything he’d said seemed to be about her. She couldn’t remember it word for word, but something about the point of suffering. That the things that made you suffer most were the ones that linked you to other people. Connected you to everyone who’d ever been alive … So it wasn’t for nothing, she suddenly thought. They weren’t for nothing, her lost children.)
‘I liked it too,’ said Thomas, but he didn’t seem to be listening. He had turned his body to exclude Winston. She glanced at Winston apologetically, and Thomas seemed to realize what he had done. ‘Did you like it, uhm?’ he threw in Winston’s direction, but he had apparently forgotten his name.
‘Baldwin’s, like, an icon,’ Winston said, and smiled his radiant smile at Thomas, the smile that usually made people like him, the smile that probably protected him (because Shirley sensed he was vulnerable).
But Thomas didn’t respond to his charm. The conversation faltered and died; Thomas’s coldness made things awkward. Winston suddenly remembered he had things to do. Shirley felt sorry; it had been a rare chance for her to be alone with him. She had been sure he wanted to talk. Now Thomas had put paid to that.
Shirley stared after Winston forlornly. She felt she had failed him in some important way. He had asked the family to come to the film; only she had come. And she’d let him down. She watched his elegant narrow head weaving away through the indifferent crowd. His shoulders looked rounded to her, defeated, as if he had lost an important battle. She told herself she was exaggerating. But later she would remember it.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ Thomas said.
‘You frightened him off. He’s a very sweet boy.’
‘I’m sure I didn’t.’ But he looked triumphant. ‘Have you known him long?’
‘Yes. Why?’ She was aware she was snapping.
‘Oh nothing.’
She could see there was something. It has to be jealousy, she thought, and found herself faintly stirred. Thomas was a big man. Clever. Attractive.
She knew she mustn’t think like this. ‘I’m not going home, as a matter of fact. I’m going to the hospital to see Dad.’
‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘I thought I would walk. It’s a lovely day.’
He was visibly relaxing. ‘I actually saw your dad this morning … But I’d like to walk with you, if you don’t mind.’
It was almost as if he wanted to protect her. They walked together to the hospital, talking about the Baldwin film. She warmed to him, finding he had liked it too.
‘I thought he was amazing,’ Thomas said, as they crossed the road, arms touching lightly. ‘That bit when he said to the journalist, after the deaths of Michael X and Martin Luther King, “I have been trying to write, between assassinations.”’
‘Yes. Very witty. But terrible. But what got to me most was the simplest thing. He said something like, “They’re killing my friends, and have been as long as I’ve been alive.”’
‘At least things have never been that bad in England. I watch a film like that, and get all fired up –’ He was waving his hands, and walking faster.
‘That’s to your credit –’ she said, eagerly. (Perhaps that was why he had been rude to Winston. Perhaps he had simply been upset –)
‘– and I realize things are relatively OK here.’
She digested this. ‘Mmm. Well, I was married to an African.’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘Look, it’s complicated.’ But Shirley didn’t want to argue.
So Thomas felt encouraged to go on. ‘At the library, you know, it’s all sorts – West Indian, Asian, Irish, a Swede – and nearly half the staff are black. But we all get on. It’s just not an issue. Apparently the only time we didn’t was the eighties, when the council got terribly p.c. and sent two race relations advisers in. Then everyone started to hate each other. Meanwhile these advisers ruined the stock, chucking out books that had the, quotes, wrong message and spending the earth on, I don’t know, huge glossy books on Portuguese slavery that cost forty quid and never went out … Hundreds of books on racism. But the public doesn’t care about things like that. People aren’t interested, is the bottom line.’
He obviously thought he was being daring. Shirley was used to people doing that, priding themselves on saying the unsayable. Though what they said was often predictable. ‘Are you sure no one’s interested?’ she asked. They were turning in through the gates of the hospital. ‘Surely a lot of the readers are black. Winston for example. My boyfriend’s brother.’
There was a silence. His step checked slightly. ‘Just now? Was that man your boyfriend’s brother?’
Why did he seem so taken aback? Had he assumed her boyfriend was white? ‘He’s doing a thesis on James Baldwin.’
‘What? … Is he?’
Thomas looked shell-shocked. Irritated, Shirley expanded.
‘At University College London. Not just on James Baldwin. On another two writers who were friends of his as well.’ She tried to remember. ‘Norman Mailer. He’s American too. And – Eldridge Cleaver. Who turned against Baldwin … He hated white people and, you know, homosexuals. Winston was telling me all about it. I think he’s been taking notes in your library. So some of those books would have come in useful. What’s the matter, Thomas? Your mouth is open.’
He looked briefly like her father remembering a name, slowly, unwillingly, with very great pain, when he needed it, and her mother was out.