Fallout (18 page)

Nina had been talking to her director, Malcolm Dewberry. She happened to look across the room just as Luke walked through the door.

And it was, to her, as if the many people between them had fallen away and formed a space for her to see him. He had dark hair, messy, and a grey-blue cotton shirt. He was quite tall and his shoulders, or the way his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow – no, it wasn’t that. He was with two other people but they were out of focus to her; his energy took the light from the space around. He looked restless, head half-inclined to hear what the man next to him was saying but distracted, and then he caught sight of her – his head jerked up minutely and he looked.

They looked at one another across the room for perhaps two seconds. And then he put his hand up quickly and turned away – a movement that was half a head rub, half-flinching, hiding his face from her. With his back to her she saw his hand go to the back of his neck and then a group of people stepped between them, and she couldn’t see him any more.

Time jolted back to speed; she was out of breath. She felt herself blush and she looked guiltily around. Malcolm had gone. She put her drink down clumsily on the window ledge, looking for some occupation, fumbling for cigarettes. And then as thoughts returned to her she wondered who he was.

She looked up again. He wasn’t by the door – just other people, frustrating and faceless, in and out. She looked quickly about, both dreading and hoping to see him. There, ten feet away, through the crowd, the arm of his shirt. The thrill of the sight of it was acute – she leaned to the left to see who he was with. A dark girl, with extraordinary eyes – it was the stage manager, Leigh – perhaps it was make-up or nerves lighting her; she didn’t look the same as she usually did. Jealously, Nina remembered her asking to bring her boyfriend, but she and the man looked more like brother and sister than—

‘Nina!’

Chrissie Southey. Drunk. Good. She could talk to Chrissie and still keep looking at him.

‘Chrissie, darling, have you got a drink?’

Chrissie held up her glass and jiggled the ice in it.

‘An adorable boy keeps topping me up. Looks rather like Petula Clark.’

Nina laughed. ‘He’s one of Tony’s.’

‘How do you know?’ Chrissie leaned in, eyes wide, amber hair tousled and falling.

‘Know what?’

‘The
boy
. . .’

‘No, Chrissie, Tony found him – and his friend. To serve.’

‘How Jean Genet of him.’

‘Yes . . .’

Nina glanced over Chrissie’s shoulder, she couldn’t see the grey-blue shirt any longer. She looked the other way, to her right, past Chrissie’s upheld glass, and she saw him leave the room – his back – disappearing into the shadow of the hallway.

‘All
play
and no fun makes Jill – you know the expression,’ said Chrissie. ‘I’ve turned down three – no, four – tellies recently just because why graft, graft, graft?’

‘I thought you were waiting to hear about that film that went to Judy Geeson,’ said Nina, forgetting to be tactful, looking over her shoulder.

‘Not really. There’s so much
else
to do. Alexander says he loves one and one loves him, of course – but the movie scene is a drag.’

She carried on talking. Nina didn’t listen.

‘And does one want to have a baby?’ said Chrissie, leaning in to her.

‘What?’ said Nina. Perhaps he’d left. Perhaps he’d been there for hours, in the kitchen, without her knowing, and now he was leaving.

‘Sorry, darling,’ she said, ‘just a minute . . .’

She left Chrissie and pushed through the crowd towards the door, and for a second she was aware of Tony watching her from the sofa.

The landing had some people leaning over the banister as if they were in a box at the theatre and laughing uproariously. Nina almost ran past them and down the stairs. The front door was open. He wasn’t there. In the hall she looked into the dining room but it was empty. The tiny room at the back that was supposed to be hers was empty too. She went to the top of the kitchen stairs. A troop of people were coming up. She was forced to wait, leaning back on her hands, smiling automatically as each of them went by.

‘Nina.’

‘Nina, darling.’

‘Happy birthday, darling.’

She pretended pleasure, desperate, waiting for them to go.

And then, suddenly, there he was. She was face to face with him at the top of the stairs, inches apart. He had been coming up behind the others, hidden, and now he was in front of her.

He was younger than she’d thought. Younger than Tony. Perhaps even her age. He didn’t look English. He was staring at her.

‘I’m Nina,’ she said, but she couldn’t smile.

‘I know,’ he said.

Then he took a step backwards, winced and shook his head once, as if he was having a conversation with himself, and bumped into a woman coming along the landing to go down.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and moved back out of the way of the stairs.

‘Funny how people always walk about at parties.’ She rushed the words. ‘Always looking for the best bit.’

‘I’m Luke,’ he said.

She stared at him again. He was staring back. People passed them by and she had the sensation everybody could tell what she felt, that the air between them was different from everywhere else.

‘Come over here,’ he said, and he went to the window at the back of the hall.

She followed.

They stood a safe distance apart, on either side of the window facing one another as the party carried on above and below and people paraded past with glasses and cigarettes held aloft, from hall to kitchen to sitting room, up and down.

Her wrists were very narrow. She was lightly tanned and wearing a silver bracelet.

His hands – one resting on the window ledge, one by his side – were quite bony, big, and had prominent veins on them like hands in a life-study, then his wrists went into slim forearms and up, to the roll of his shirtsleeve.

She had a flame-coloured silk scarf tied in her straight brown hair; leaving her hairline and her forehead bare, like something innocent revealed.

His belt was a little too big for him and sat on his hips quite low. His shirt was wrinkled and limp, making creases over his body, half-tucked into his trousers, catching the light; his body was a secret beneath it.

Her smooth skin was exposed straight down between her breasts like an arrow, dipped in to the small crescent of her breastbone then went to shadow.

His cheek was shaved cleanly. The tendon of his neck went down to the horizontal of his collarbone, she could sense the life beneath the skin, vital.

He was still looking at her.

They felt, both of them, that until that point they had only been waiting.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ he said.

‘I don’t either,’ said Nina.

He looked into her eyes – not at some indistinct point – directly.

‘Are you . . . all right?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Is everything – fine?’

She looked up at him, clearly. ‘No,’ she said, raw with danger. ‘It’s not.’

Luke nodded, slowly, and he looked down. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I see.’

A woman passed by, her glance caught them and moved on.

‘Sorry – have we met before?’ Nina asked him.

Luke looked away, down the hall across the people. She had the feeling he wanted to get away.

‘I saw you in the play,
In Custody
, when it was at the pub. You walked past me afterwards. You wouldn’t remember.’

‘Oh. I do. I think.’

‘You were very good,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

He took a step, as if to leave, and then stopped and turned back, frowning at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you happy?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I just want to know.’

‘I don’t know why,’ said Nina, cornered. ‘I don’t know why I’m not.’

She looked helpless. ‘It will be all right,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

Then he turned and left the house, stopping sideways to pass the people in the hall, as if he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

When Luke left, when she was quite sure he had gone, Nina started upstairs. She went up away from everybody, straight ahead into Tony’s study, and closed the door behind her. She turned the key in the lock. There was no lock on the bedroom door. She could hear the noise of music and raised voices below her. She sat in her husband’s chair behind his desk. She smelled the tooled leather, turned her head to look at his pictures on the wall. She had never been in the room and not felt subsumed. Now it was an empty space, just a place for her to be. She closed her eyes and saw Luke. She imagined him and there he was, standing in front of her.

It will be all right. I promise.

She waited a long time before she went back to her party.

It was after three o’clock in the morning. The trains had stopped, the cars had gone, the houses about them up and down the road slept. Soon the milkmen would be out on their rounds – and still there were people in her house.

Nina wandered through the wreckage and quiet music, unaware, for once, of where Tony might be.

The sitting room was a sea of strewn cushions, three people were lounging with a joint on the rug by the fireplace. She didn’t know them. They looked like students. She had no idea who they had come with. The girl looked about sixteen. They were listening to Elton John singing ‘Yellow Brick Road’ and she thought if she turned it off they would leave, so she did. They dragged themselves giggling to their feet, uncomplaining, wandered past her as if she weren’t there and down the stairs.

Nina picked up a half-empty bottle of champagne that someone had abandoned to get warm and poured herself a glass. Alone, she held it up to the empty room – and to Luke, wherever he might be.

‘Happy birthday,’ she said. ‘It will be all right.’ She drank all of it to the last small drop.

The last stragglers were down by the door saying goodbye. Nina started down, unnoticed. Before reaching the bottom she sat and watched them through the banisters. Chrissie Southey was leaving with Alexander Talbot holding her up. He was as good-looking and as drunk as she was, yelling out for the taxi they had kept waiting in the street for an hour. They were a perfect couple. Nina sat on the stairs, drowsy with her secret, fond of them in their babyish small-hours passion as they snipped and squabbled. They caught sight of her.

‘
Sorry
– bye, darling –’

‘Sorry –’

‘Lovely –’

Kisses goodbye. Hugs. Farewells. Chrissie was drawling, sprawling drunk; Alexander was no better, and the people with them – Eleanor, Willy Lansbury, Jack – all trying to organise themselves into different cars with different people.

‘No, no, you said you thought it, and now,
now
, you’re lying. Why do you
lie
to me?’

‘Oh, shut up—’

‘You’re
lying
—’

‘God, you’re boring. Boring, boring, boring.’

‘Goodbye, goodbye, Nina darling . . .’

And Nina, through the banisters, uncaring, looked past them to the street with the idea that somehow Luke was waiting for her and would appear, and take her with him.
I must be drunk, too
, she thought.
I’m as drunk as they are.

And then silence. No movement that she could hear in the house.
Tomorrow
, she thought,
thank God there’s no matinée. I’ll sleep all day. I’ll sleep until four.
But she felt she might never sleep again. She got up, trailed down the rest of the stairs, and as she closed the door, at last, heard movement in the house behind her. She was chilled with exhaustion. She hoped Tony would leave her alone. Had he gone to bed already? There, a noise again. She tiptoed to the top of the kitchen stairs and hung her head down to listen. No. It was definitely upstairs, in the small back room. Her room. She went up in her stockinged feet, silent and thinking of nothing but what had happened to her and how it had made her feel and, reaching the landing, she pushed the door of her little room open.

Tony was lying back on the small chaise they had bought together on Lots Road with his trousers round his ankles. One of the waiter boys, with his silver-blond curls bobbing, was kneeling between his legs – and Tony’s head tipped back, his hand on the back of the boy’s head. The other boy was in the corner, with his trousers open and his white cock hanging limply out like raw dough, leaning over a mirror on the mantel-piece and snorting a line of coke. He jerked upright, hand slamming to cover himself as he registered her presence, while her husband and the boy continued, oblivious. Nina stood frozen with embarrassment at bursting in on them. She had trespassed. Then shock and fierce revulsion broke coldly over her, her throat closing as if something were being forced down it – as if Tony were forcing himself down it. She heard herself say something – a word, a noise – muffled. And as she backed out into the hallway, she saw Tony raise his head and see her, while the boy’s head continued to bob up and down.

Turning, she headed down the stairs, but with sudden vertigo, tripped at the top – saved herself – and then ran on, leaning on the banister. Down as far as she could get.

The kitchen was empty, wrecked, strewn, half-eaten cheeses scattered over the table. Nina halted, drenched with sudden sweat, as if her skin had been violently altered, her pores gaped. She got to the cloakroom door, onto her knees on the hard tiles, grabbing the seat just in time to get the lid up and vomited up champagne, vodka, olives, pieces of bread – gobs of the contents of her stomach splashing into the water, heaving agony in her throat. Her eyes streamed tears. When she was completely empty she sat back on her heels and wiped her eyes and her face with the backs of her hands. Her throat burned. She spat into the toilet bowl, coughed, spat again. And shakily stood up.

She turned on the taps, washed her face, rinsed her mouth. And then she sat down on the closed toilet. She stared at the
Wot, Not Married?!
poster and thought she might laugh but instead began to cry. She cried for a few minutes, trying not to make too much noise, thinking clear, shocked, childish thoughts –
My husband is queer – Why would he do this to me? – Does everyone know but me? –
dully aware all the time that this moment would be the easiest, cleanest part of the whole affair.
No, I’m not all right
, she had said to Luke and hadn’t known the truth of it. She could not think of Luke. The picture of him, that had been so clear, dissolved. But she had finished crying.