Fallout (25 page)

He went in and ran a finger along the Formica shelf beneath the mirror, looking at her make-up, magazines, pens and paper, and a biography she was reading for a possible job. Beneath it there was a shadow. The book was resting on something smaller than itself. Tony lifted the book, the distant applause still surging, subsiding, surging again.
That’s good
, he thought,
that’s a minute and a half, at least.
He picked up the stack of postcards. They were all from Oxford. Colleges, churches . . . there were more than twenty. He turned them over.

A biro scrawl:
In Oxford. Wish me luck
.

He read them, one after another:

I think that you are with me all the time.

No poem yet.
Sorry. Rewriting.

My play, not the poem. We spoke. I love you.

The moon I see here shines on you, but prettily.

The sound of applause faded and stopped.

Tony carefully replaced the postcards and turned towards the door, arranging himself. Then her running feet, pattering like a child, and there she was in the doorway, hair loose, elated. She stopped, momentarily shocked at seeing him.

‘Oh, Tony! I don’t know what to feel.’

‘Nor do I,’ he said and then waited for a moment. ‘Be quick, I’m starving and we must get to the wake.’

Henry Fidele strode past behind her in his heavy boots on the way to his dressing room, smacking Nina’s bottom with a grin.

‘Free at last,’ he said. ‘Champagne’s waiting.’

At dinner Nina’s feeling of heady release cooled. She looked around the table at the faces, and at her husband by her side. They drank toasts. Toasts to her, the absent Hector Romero, the director, and Henry – who had shaved off his PFA moustache in two minutes flat in the dressing room and, transformed, kept stroking his clean upper lip and laughing. He was off to Stratford in a few days. Nina had nowhere to go. She could pack her bag and find Luke in Oxford if she wanted and she almost laughed out loud. Such faith was absurd.
You coward
, she thought,
you coward
.

‘To Tony!’ they toasted, and Nina lifted her glass too, and drank. Her hand was shaking.

Tony met her eye.

‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

All the way home she rehearsed the line in her head.
I’m leaving you. I’m leaving
. But she did not say it.

‘Come along,’ said Tony as he led her up the stairs.

They had made love since her affair with Luke started; not often but too much. They had done it what he called
the usual way
– facing her, and simple. If Luke asked if he had touched her, Nina thought, she would lie about it, because she did not feel he had. Sex with Tony did not have any connection with what she and Luke were like. He wouldn’t understand that. How could he? He wasn’t married, he could luxuriate in purity. She didn’t have that liberty.

She undressed in the bathroom and put on her long silk nightdress, staring at herself in the mirror all the time she did it.
I’m
leaving
you
.
I’m leaving you
. Tony was waiting for her.

Pausing in the bedroom doorway she saw he expected her to go to him and so she did. He slipped the thin straps from her shoulders.

‘Nina,’ he said, ‘is there something you wanted to tell me?’

Of all the things she expected from him it wasn’t this. She started like a frightened animal. His expression was unreadable. She remembered how he had looked when she found him in her dressing room, the tiny tugging notion he had changed. He didn’t say anything else at all but just waited, with his expectant eyes upon her. She could not have uttered a word and yet in her head she repeated the sentence,
I’m in love with somebody else; I want to leave you
. It span and replayed, demanding to be said. Unsaid.
I’m in love with someone else
. Tony was still watching her.

‘Nina?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘Are we sure?’

She nodded.

‘I’m very glad to hear it. Get onto the bed now,’ he said, ‘darling.’

Nina lay naked on her front on top of the sheets. Tony stood at the foot of the bed holding a pair of her tights loosely in his hand and looking at her body. He got onto his knees on the edge of the mattress.

‘Put your hands behind you,’ he said.

She did.

‘Here, no, like this,’ said Tony, taking her hands and pushing them together. He tied them, with a figure of eight, and made a knot. She began to breathe more quickly. The elastic material was tight enough to fill her fingers with blood so that they throbbed slightly.

He leaned forward close to her ear and whispered, ‘I thought you might miss being in custody.’

She did not answer. He took off the scarf he was wearing, tied as a cravat, and put it over her eyes. She did not speak. He put a leg on either side of her body and like that, on hands and knees, he lowered himself down to speak to her again.

‘You have your friends. I have mine,’ he said quietly.

He began to kiss her neck. ‘You are not to make a public fool out of me,’ he said. ‘Open your legs.’

She did. He stroked the back of her leg from the ankle to the inside of her thigh. He pinched her wrists and waggled the two hands pressed together at the small of her back. Her shoulders were drawn back but her chest and throat pressed close into the soft mattress.

‘Are you uncomfortable?’ he asked.

Nina had no words. Her mind was limited by sensation and misty panic.

‘Are you uncomfortable?’ he asked again, and then, because she did not answer him, continued.

She had become familiar with being tethered or blindfolded, but this was different. This was the first time he took the next step, and put himself into the virgin part of her that truly fascinated him; the shock and the pain of it made her scream.

‘Relax,’ he said, ‘you’ll like it better.’

She tried to do as he said, and concentrated on freeing her mouth from the pillow to breathe.

When he had finished he went to the bathroom. Nina found she could get her hands free quite easily and turn over.

When they were both in bed, and clean, he kissed her. Before turning the lights out she took two Valium, but they didn’t distance her from distress enough; she cried herself into a deep sleep, sobbing as Tony patted her hand in the dark.

The next morning she called Marianne. They met in a Chelsea restaurant. Nina wore dark glasses because her eyes were so swollen she looked freakish. She needed comfort. She would have done anything for it.

‘It’s raining, you look ridiculous,’ said Marianne, and so Nina took her glasses off.

‘Oh. You’ve been crying. You’re not pregnant?’

Nina shook her head. The waiter brought their wine and poured it. Nina tried to hide from him, chin down, and when he went away she raised a glass to her mother.

‘To marriage,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Marianne, ‘has Tony been naughty? So soon?’

Nina’s eyes began to cry again, despite herself. Marianne took her hand.

‘Darling,’ she said warmly, the voice Nina loved more than anything. ‘
Tell me
.’

‘It was stupid of me to come out.’

The waiter returned and stood over them, expectantly. ‘
Mesdames?
’

Nina looked down while Marianne ordered.

‘And for you?’ said the waiter, and when Nina kept her face turned away Marianne ordered for her, too.

‘Ridiculous man,’ said Marianne as he went. ‘You’re quite right. If you were in such a state you shouldn’t have come.’

‘I couldn’t stay there.’ Nina spoke so quietly that Marianne had to lean forward to hear. She took her hand and held it.

‘Mummy, he’s – not –’ She made several false starts.

‘It’s all right, darling. Go on.’

‘I think that he hates me. He hates women. He hates sex but he does it anyway to – I don’t know – to make me low or hurt me.’

At the outright mention of sex Marianne stiffened.

‘Darling, this is hardly the place.’

‘I’m sorry. I know.’

‘But I have to tell you that wasn’t
my
experience of him at all.’

Nina had forgotten her mother’s affair with Tony, neither of them had spoken of it since. She was appalled at the mention of it now, and the insinuation that it was not Tony who was at fault, but she. Had her mother not inspired this sadism in him? Was it only she who invited it?

‘Is it very horrible? Very often?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘perhaps you’re making a bit of a fuss. It’s not exactly a huge surprise if he’s unusual in that department. He is Tony Moore, after all. But I am sorry for you.’ Marianne began to fidget with her bracelet. She had had enough of the conversation.

‘It isn’t normal, the way he is!’ Nina’s voice broke.

‘Oh, stop it.’

Nina drank half her glass of wine, gritting her teeth to swallow, trying to hold on to the outrage – that it was not all right what was happening to her. She tried again.

‘I think,’ she said steadily, ‘I think that if I am this unhappy, if I
think
he’s cruel. Isn’t that enough?’

Her mother regarded her coolly. ‘Are you thinking of leaving him?’ she asked.

Nina wiped her eyes. She swallowed and took a breath. ‘I have to.’

There was a pause. Marianne glanced around the restaurant and then at her daughter wiping the constant tears from her cheeks with her fingertips.

‘Well, where on earth would you go?’ she said, irritable. ‘What’s your next job? Does Jo have anything for you? I imagine Tony knows a great deal more than you what you should go onto, now the play is over.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If you stay in theatre you’ll barely support yourself.’

Nina looked her mother in the eye. She knew all Marianne saw were her swollen lids, dark circles. Her gaze had always been an unflattering mirror. When Nina’s eyes met Luke’s she was a different person altogether.

‘I’ve met somebody else,’ she said.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Marianne, sitting back. ‘Fast work. All becomes clear. You’re
looking
for an excuse to leave your husband then.’

‘No—’

‘Who is he?’

Nina blushed and couldn’t say his name. She didn’t want to tell. He felt too real to make a show of. She wouldn’t know what to say – and if she was honest, she didn’t know how to make him sound acceptable to her mother.

Marianne watched her closely. ‘Does this person really want you?’

‘Is that so unlikely?’

‘Don’t be silly. You know what I mean. Is he serious?’

‘I think so.’

‘Is he rich?’

‘No.’

‘Is he in the business?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not an actor?’

‘No.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Tony found out about him.’ Immediately she regretted this further confidence; trust she knew even as she gave it would be abused.

‘Oh, you
absolute
fool!’ said her mother. ‘Was he livid?’

Nina gave a short laugh. ‘I would say,’ she said slowly, ‘I would say he’s quite pleased.’

They sat in silence once more and their salads arrived. Marianne raised her eyebrows at hers and pushed it about with her fork. She ate a few mouthfuls.

Nina finished her wine. She was beginning to lose sight of her goal; she couldn’t remember what had felt so urgent that she must rush to her mother and announce she must leave Tony. She could not now see that this day was any different to any other.

‘Well, Nina,’ said Marianne, and her voice was practical, her
we must face reality
voice, ‘I honestly can’t see you have a serious problem. It seems to me you are managing to have your cake and eat it, aren’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Darling, if there aren’t going to be any black eyes then Tony can have his friends, and you can have yours.’

Nina opened her eyes wide. ‘That’s just what he said.’

‘Did he?’ said Marianne, and smiled. ‘He’s absolutely shocking, that man.’

There was silence. Her mother continued picking over her salad for morsels.

‘He is,’ said Nina, her own voice surprising her.

‘What?’ Marianne glanced up.

‘He is shocking.’ The need to explain herself had left her. She pushed her chair back from the table with both hands.

‘He is shocking. And so are you,’ she said loudly, her tears had started again. Even in rebellion she was feeble.

‘
Just be quiet!
’ whispered Marianne with urgent embarrassment.

‘I
can’t
! I can’t—’

She stood up quickly and left, pulling her bag from the chair but forgetting her dark glasses by her plate – finding her way somehow, clumsily, observed by all – out into the open air of the street.

Six hours later the curtain would go up on the first night of
Paper Pieces
in Oxford.

The first few days of rehearsals had been a disjointed, low-energy scraping together of actors disgruntled to leave London between Christmas and New Year, then happier, but hungover, as January began. The script settled into solid shape and they moved from read-throughs to blocking it out in the freezing-cold rehearsal rooms with tape on the floor for walls, doors and marks, and rows of chairs for furniture.

The second week had been a five-day run of extended delight; startling and unlikely. Luke would remember it all his life; his interior world made solid, the voices that had been for so long in his head ringing out physical and real. The laughter. The actors and Scott-Mathieson, the crew, the SM, even the producers, if they were in, were all pushed into laughter – big, real laughter at the play; nobody could get through a scene without corpsing. They were filled with confidence and the feeling of the united company moving towards performance – more than he ever anticipated, more than he had known at Graft or almost anywhere. The piece – the three pieces – were linked, one-act plays; two before the interval, one after. The characters were taut sketches of fragile people, clinging to the slippery hand-holds of status. They were the paper pieces fluttering in Luke’s dialogue, mocked; absurd yet pitiful.