Elegance and Innocence (45 page)

‘Now, cool and casual, very cool ladies,’ Robbie whispers, ‘and … back to piano man!’

‘How long do we have to do this?’ Imo asks, readjusting her black-veiled pillbox hat, which doesn’t seem inclined to move with her head at all but rather against it.

Robbie plays with the layers of crinoline on her New Look dress. ‘I really think that should do it, darling. Now remember, the trick is to keep the ball in the air!’

‘What ball?’ Imo frowns.

But Robbie just winks. ‘Watch and learn!’

Sure enough, two minutes later they arrive, flourishing a bottle of cheap house white and five wineglasses.

Andy’s from Minnesota and his colleague, Greg, from Alabama. They’re here on a sales conference. This is their first time in England.

We nod as if we’ve been here for years.

There’s a certain disappointment on both sides to pulling fellow Americans; there’s nothing glamorous or intriguing about travelling all the way across the world only to meet someone you could easily find in New Jersey. But the selection of glamorous characters in Bubbles is virtually non-existent. And it’s getting late. So we fall into all the usual things tourists discuss; how narrow seats are on airlines these days, what a disaster the food is, and why no one can make a decent cup of coffee.

‘So, why are you guys wearing these get-ups?’ Greg asks in his thick, slow drawl. He’s younger than his friend, with pink, flushed cheeks and a wide, full mouth that doesn’t like to close.

‘We’re actresses,’ Robbie says, sipping her drink daintily. To her, that’s reason enough. But he continues to blink at us.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, we’re larger than life,’ Imo adds, filling her glass again. She pushes her hat further back on her head but still manages to drink through her veil.

‘I see.’ He purses his lips and nods thoughtfully. ‘So, are y’all in character now?’

I don’t like him. He seems stupid. And his sullen friend Andy keeps staring at me.

‘We’re always in character,’ I snap. If he mentions the exchange rate one more time, I’ll run screaming from the building.

‘So.’ Robbie, sensing friction, scoops the ball off the floor one more time. ‘Where are you boys staying?’

‘We told you.’ Andy’s tone is flat and bored. He thinks he’s pretty cool with his Tom Selleck moustache and blow-dried hair. ‘Across the street at the Sherlock Holmes. How old are these anyway?’ he asks, fingering Dave and Derek.

His hand brushes my bare arm.

I recoil.

Robbie catches my eye and I force my lips into a smile.

‘Probably dead before you were born. And how old are you, Andy?’ Flirting with men you hate is such hard work.

‘Thirty-two.’ He looks at me with a firm, tough gaze, as if to say, ‘So what are you going to make of that?’

I make nothing of it. But smile again.

Robbie keeps nodding to the wine bottle. It’s empty. Evidently it’s my job to do something about it.

Rocco launches into ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’. Imo claps her hands with glee. ‘Oh! This is one of my very favourites!’

She’s drunk already. Imo’s an infamously cheap date. She gets loud and excited, and her head lolls about like a doll with no stuffing.

Andy rolls his eyes.

Greg laughs, making a kind of self-conscious gasping sound; pulling at his jacket. It was obviously his idea to come over with the wine.

‘Gosh.’ Here comes some more sparkling social repartee.
‘Y’all have no idea how poor the exchange rate is! It’s incredible! These drinks were a fortune!’

‘Oh, they can’t have been as bad as all that!’ Robbie’s playing Scarlett O’Hara again, which perhaps isn’t such a wise move with a boy from the South, patting his knee playfully.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he says, lapsing into silence.

Our gay, exciting evening in Bubbles wine bar is rapidly deflating. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ is beginning to take its toll.

‘Go ask him to play something more lively,’ I suggest to Imo. ‘Something a little less morbid.’

And as she staggers up to the rotating pink stage, Robbie makes another attempt at a fresh bottle of wine. She tilts the empty one upside down. ‘Can you believe how quickly that went!’ She laughs. ‘Now what are we going to do?’

Andy ignores her. ‘What are you doing tonight?’ He’s looking at me intently.

I shift away from him.

‘Just things.’

‘What things?’ he persists.

My mind goes blank. ‘I have to study.’

‘Study?’ He sounds horrified.

‘I’m a student,’ I add defensively.

And he laughs, rocking back in his chair. ‘Oh, well, that explains a lot!’ He drains his glass. ‘Come on, Greg. Let’s get out of here.’

Greg gapes at him like a fish. ‘What?’

‘And now a little surprise for some Very Special Ladies!’ Rocco beams at us. Imo’s draped over him on the piano stool. Falling forward, she starts crooning a dangerously off-key version of ‘S’Wonderful’ into the microphone. She’s got a bad case of dolly head.

‘How s’marvellous!’ Robbie waves to the barman. ‘Let’s have another round!’

Andy ploughs his hands into his pockets. ‘Are you buying?’

And for a moment, the ball vanishes altogether.

Robbie sighs; looks at him hard. ‘Andy, do you like games?’

He sizes her up and then sits down again. ‘Sure. Why?’

‘I have a good one.’ She undoes a large diamanté brooch from her dress. ‘Would you like to see how far I’m willing to go to get another bottle of wine?’

‘Pretty far!’ he snorts, leaning back in his chair.

She shrugs her shoulders, extending her thin arm across the table. ‘Shall we see just how far?’ She flicks the brooch open so the long pin is stretched out like a blade. ‘I must say, your coldness has chilled my heart, Andy. I feel desperate measures coming on. And I’m afraid I’m going to have to slit my wrist with this pin if someone doesn’t buy me a drink soon.’

She smiles sweetly.

We stare at her.

The barman approaches. ‘Yes?’

Robbie clenches her fist.

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Andy sneers.

But she just winks at him. ‘I don’t know about you’ – her voice is soft and smooth – ‘but I’m absolutely parched.’

Without even looking, she draws the pin downwards.

I gasp.

Andy lunges forward and grabs her hand.

‘You’re crazy!’ he hisses, prising the brooch out of her grip.

‘I’m thirsty,’ she reminds him. ‘And besides, who knew you could move so quickly. Not bad for an old man.’ And she pats his thigh.

Now he’s staring at her with the same lecherous intent he was lavishing on me a minute ago. ‘I’m not that old,’ he assures her. ‘Fine. You win. Another bottle of house white,’ he barks at the barman, who shakes his head and disappears.

Robbie’s shoulders relax.

Andy’s still holding her wrist. ‘You’re one crazy kid,’ he keeps repeating, over and over.

She frees her hand from his, leans towards him. ‘Would you like to see just how crazy I am?’

That’s it. I grab her by the arm and pull her up. ‘Excuse me, we have to go to the Ladies.’ And yanking her across the room, I practically fling her into the toilet. ‘What are you doing?’ I yell. ‘Those guys are losers! What are you doing?’

She leans back against the wall and shuts her eyes. ‘I’m doing what I always do.’ She sounds tired. ‘Don’t you want another drink?’

‘No, not that badly! What would you have done if he hadn’t stopped you?’

She ignores me.

‘Robbie! What would you have done?’

‘It’s a game, Evie.’ She shrugs her shoulders, checks her make-up in the mirror. ‘It’s just a game.’ She makes it sound simple; obvious.

‘But … but you can’t be seriously thinking about, you know, going off with him!’ My indignation, which two minutes ago made perfect, unequivocal sense, now sounds unexpectedly clichéd.

‘You’re such a good friend to me.’ She kisses me on the cheek. ‘I like that.’

I catch her arm again. ‘But …’ I struggle to find the words. ‘But … I mean, you don’t even like him … do you?’

She’s distant; far away. ‘I do things I don’t want to do all the time. I can’t help it.’ She smiles sadly. ‘I’m bad.’

I don’t understand.

I let go of her arm.

Robbie strolls back to the table, a slow, rolling model’s stride. As she draws closer, Andy rises, pulling her chair out for her and refilling her glass. He’s taken off his tie, opened the top buttons on his shirt.

Imo and I don’t stay much longer. During ‘Embraceable You’, Imo declares loudly into the microphone that she thinks she’s going to be sick. Greg quickly offers to see us home.

I wait up for her, sitting in the black leather chair in the living room, knees drawn under my chin, listening in the dark to passing traffic and the sounds of the sleeping city. It grows later and, with each passing hour, quieter.

But still no Robbie.

The Sherlock Holmes Hotel is just round the corner in Baker Street.

‘May I help you?’ The night manager looks up from his paper.

‘No, thank you.’ I settle into the corner of one of the chintz sofas. ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

I must look ridiculous; with my nightgown shoved into my jeans under Robbie’s rabbit fur jacket. But I don’t care.

Nearly an hour later, the lift doors open.

She moves with the same dazed slowness of someone stumbling away from a car accident. An unlit cigarette dangles from her fingers. The mink bolero’s askew and dirty; her pale lips swollen from where her lipstick has rubbed off.

I stand up.

She frowns, as if she can’t quite place me.

‘What are you doing here?’

I push open the glass door. An icy wind cuts through us.

‘Come on.’ I hold out my hand.

But she just stares at me.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’ve been sitting, waiting, wondering the same thing. And now it’s four in the morning, the door’s open, the night manager’s watching us and I still don’t have an answer.

‘You’re not bad, Robbie.’

Suddenly she seems quite small.

I hold out my hand again.

‘In fact, you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known.’

This time she takes it.

When we arrive home, I turn the key in the lock, pushing the door open as quietly as I can.

Imo’s still asleep.

Outside, a bird sings.

We stand in the purple half-light.

‘Good night,’ Robbie whispers. She leans towards me, her breath warm on my cheek.

I turn.

Her lips brush against mine.

And very slowly, very softly, she kisses me.

‘This is a station announcement. Southbound trains on the Jubilee are experiencing delays due to a signal failure at Finchley Road tube station. London Underground apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause to your journey’

I’m still berating myself for this morning’s conversation with Melvin and now I’m stuck; one of nearly seventy hot, irritated commuters, jostling for position at St John’s Wood tube station. Most of us have been here at least a quarter of an hour – that is, fifteen London Underground minutes, which are at least twice as long as normal minutes anywhere else. And we’re doing what the English do to register our frustration; shaking our heads to no one in particular, folding our newspapers with extra violence, examining our watches with all the subtlety of a pantomime dame, so that we all understand how outraged and incensed we are by the utter inadequacy of the service provided … but without ever having to go so far as to say it out loud.

Finally, moving with no particular speed or urgency, a train emerges from the tunnel, already swollen with passengers. We crowd around the doors, surging forward as they creak open. Once all in, pressed up against one another cheek by jowl, we wait.

And the train sits there.

A minute goes by. And then another. Latecomers race from the escalators and squeeze themselves into the already overflowing cars. I’m wedged between two large, sweaty men; one with too much aftershave, the other without nearly enough. The latter raises his arm, reaching for the hanging strap. And I think I’m going to faint.

A distraction’s needed. Reading my morning paper’s out as I can’t move my arms.

Only the advertisements remain. I look up.

An enormous black bird glares down at me.

‘Sound and Fury: The very best of Raven’, the poster reads. ‘Coming, May 2001.’

I blink.

Suddenly, he’s everywhere.

Then the inevitable happens. Just as the buzzer sounds and the doors finally begin to close, a homeless man with a guitar bounces on.

I avert my eyes. Please, Lord, make him move past. Make him go into another car.

But no. He smiles broadly, a great, toothless grin, unpacks the guitar (which isn’t easy in a crowded train) and starts singing ‘Norwegian Wood’.

‘I once knew a girl or should I say, she once knew me …’ His voice, rough with cigarettes and alcohol, scrapes across the notes; the very antithesis of the young John Lennon’s.

The train lurches forward.

There’s no escape.

Thing is, it’s a difficult song to forget, once you get it into your head.

Round and round it goes, waltzing endlessly.

Round and round and round.

Regent’s Park on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon in April is littered with lovers; strolling hand in hand,
entwined round each other in the shade of newly blossoming chestnut trees, or, if older, sitting next to one another on benches, bent over sections of the
Sunday Times
. The world is in bloom, great blazing fields of daffodils stretch along the pathways and the air’s full of cherry blossom, floating on the breeze like pale-pink snow.

Lindsay Crufts and I are rehearsing outside. The day is too balmy, too beautiful to be stuck indoors. And besides, the scene we have to present tomorrow, between the famous writer Trigorin and the young aspiring actress Nina in
The Seagull
, is set out of doors, on a day not unlike this one. We’re sitting on a grassy slope, amid a grove of slender silver birches, swaying in the sunlight.

Lindsay rises, regarding me with an expression of pained seriousness (his indication that he’s acting).‘“Day and night I’m haunted by one thought: I must write, I must write, I must … the minute I’ve finished one novel, I must immediately start another, then another, and another …”’