Play to the End (2 page)

You can lay that thoroughly to waste.

When Jenny left me, I told myself it was for the best. Platitudes like

"Time for us both to move on' fell regularly from my lips. I think I may even have believed them. For a while.

Not any more, though. I should never have let her go. I should have done things differently. Very differently. Hindsight is the sharpest sight of all. It lays bare the truth.

And the bleak truth is that there's nothing I can do to repair the damage I've done. There's no way back. At least, that's what I would have said. Until tonight.

Jenny had left a mobile number with Eunice. When I rang it, she answered instantly. And all I could manage by way of greeting was,

"It's me."

"I expect you were surprised to hear from me," she said after a long pause.

"You could say that, yes."

"Can we meet?"

"When have I ever objected to the idea?"

I heard her sigh before she answered. "Can we?"

"Yes. Of course."

"This evening?"

"All right."

"You're not busy?"

"What do you think?"

Another sigh. "There's no point to this if you're going to be '

"I'll be whatever you need me to be, Jenny. OK?" I could, perhaps I should, have asked why she wanted to see me. But I didn't dare to.

"Where and when?"

The Palace Pier at six o'clock was about as quiet as it ever gets. Most of the bars and attractions were closed, although the Palace of Fun was open for the benefit of anyone determined to pump money into its fruit machines. The sea sucked sluggishly at the beach below, while a couple speaking what sounded like Hungarian huddled in one of the shelters, sharing a bag of chips. All in all, the venue struck me as improbably distant from Jenny's natural habitat.

Then, as I reached the end of the pier, where the helter-skelter and merry-go-rounds were shrouded in wintry darkness, another thought struck me. Perhaps Jenny had chosen to meet me there just because of the shortage of witnesses, especially witnesses likely to know her. She didn't want to be seen with me. That was the point. The pier was somewhere she could be confident of a very private word.

She was leaning against the railings halfway back along the other side, dressed in a long dark coat and boots, gazing vacantly down at the beach, her face obscured by the brim of a fur-trimmed hat. If I hadn't been looking out for her, I might not even have noticed her. Though she, presumably, would have noticed me.

"Great night for a promenade," I said stupidly as I approached. "How about a barbecue later?"

"Hello, Toby." She turned and looked at me, a tight half-smile flicking across her face. "Thanks for coming."

"You look well." (This was something of an understatement. Separation from me had evidently agreed with her. Either that or she's found a good beautician in Brighton. I prefer to believe the latter.)

"Shall we sit down?" she asked.

"If we can find a seat." This didn't raise even half a smile.

The bench in the nearest shelter was dappled with droplets of rainwater, shimmering in the lamplight. I thought I caught a few words of Hungarian drifting over from the other side of the structure as I brushed some of the water away. We sat down.

"The chippy's open," I said, nodding over my shoulder towards the kiosk I'd passed earlier. "Fancy sharing fifty penn' orth

"No, thank you."

"When was the last time we shared a bag of chips on a draughty sea front, would you say?"

"Have we ever?"

This wasn't going well. Jenny didn't seem remotely pleased to see me.

Which was odd, since we were meeting at her request.

"How's the play going?" she asked suddenly.

"Do you really want to know?"

"I read about Jimmy Maidment."

Well, that was no surprise. The apparent suicide of a famous comic actor, albeit one not as famous as he once was, makes plenty of headlines. Throwing himself under a Tube train the day before he was due to open in Lodger in the Throat may have been Jimmy's characteristically pithy way of telling the rest of the cast that he doubted the play would resurrect his career, or anyone else's.

Alternatively, maybe he was just drunk and missed his footing. The coroner will say his piece in due course. Either way, though, it wasn't a good omen. I miss him. And so does the play.

"It must have been a shock," said Jenny. "Was he depressed?"

"Perpetually, I expect."

"The reviewers seem to think .. ."

"That we're lost without him. I know. And it's true. Fred Durrance isn't in Jimmy's class. But that's not the only problem. And I'm sure you didn't suggest meeting so we could analyse where it's all gone wrong, so '

"Sorry," she interrupted, her voice softening.

A brief silence fell. The sea hissed soothingly beneath the pier. "Me too," I murmured.

"Will it go to London?" she asked.

"Not a chance."

"So, this is the end."

"Apparently."

"I am sorry, you know."

"Sorry enough to have me back?" I smiled thinly at her in the lamplight. "Just joking."

"I'm very happy with Roger," she said, apparently assuming I doubted it, which actually I didn't. "We've set a date for the wedding."

"Pity I left my diary at the Sea Air."

Jenny sighed. I was trying her patience, an art I unintentionally perfected a long time ago. "Let's walk," she said, rising before the words were properly out, and striding off towards the shore, boot heels clacking on the planks of the pier.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I fell in beside her.

"Nowhere," she replied. "We're just walking."

"Look, Jenny, can I just say .. . I'm glad you're happy. Strange as it may seem, I've always hoped you would be. If there's anything I can

'

"There is." Her voice was firm but far from hostile. That's when I guessed what was really making her so edgy. She had a favour to ask of me. Since the last favour she'd asked of me was to get out of her life and stay out, it was, however you cut it, a delicate situation. "Will you do something for me, Toby?"

"Gladly."

"You haven't heard what it is yet."

"You wouldn't ask me to do it if it wasn't the right thing to do."

She might have smiled at that. I can't be sure. "I have a problem."

"Go on."

But she didn't go on until we'd turned off the pier and started west along the promenade, the empty beach to our left, the thinly trafficked sea front to our right. A full minute of silence must in fact have passed before she started to explain, which she did with the bewildering question, "Have I told you about Brimmers?"

"No," was the best answer I could give, sensing this wasn't the time to point out that she hadn't told me anything at all in a good long while.

"It's a hat shop I own in the Lanes. I've really enjoyed making a go of it. It's quite successful, actually."

"You always wanted your own business."

"Yes. And now I've got it."

"That's great."

"Roger's fine about it."

"Good. And what line of business is Roger in?"

"Corporate investment." I was still puzzling over what precisely that meant when she briskly continued: "Look, this has nothing to do with Roger. The thing is, some weird bloke's been hanging around the shop.

There's a cafe opposite where he sits in the window, sipping endless cups of tea and staring across at Brimmers. I find him standing around outside when I open or close up. I've seen him out at Wickhurst too.

There's a footpath that runs close to the house. I can't walk along it without bumping into him."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know."

"Haven't you asked him?"

"I've spoken to him a couple of times, but he doesn't respond. He answers "Can I help you?" with "No", then stares some more and wanders off. He's beginning to prey on my nerves. I think he's harmless, but he just won't go away."

"Have you spoken to the police?"

"To complain of what? A man patronizing a cafe and walking along a public footpath? They'd think I was persecuting him."

"Is he persecuting you?"

"It feels like it."

"Sure you don't know him?"

"Positive."

"What's he like?"

"Creepy."

"You can do better than that."

"All right. He's .. . middle-aged, I suppose, but a bit childlike at the same time. There's something of the overgrown schoolboy about him.

The nerdy, socially dysfunctional kind of schoolboy. Wears a duffel-coat, with all sorts of ... badges on it."

"Obviously dangerous, then."

"If you're not going to take this seriously ..." She tossed her head in a well-remembered gesture.

"What does Roger say?"

"I haven't told him." It was an admission she seemed reluctant to make, even though she must have known she'd have to.

"Really?"

"Yes. Really."

I can confess now to deriving some small but twisted pleasure from the discovery that Jenny had a secret from her affluent and no doubt handsome fiance and was sharing it with me. The pleasure distracted me to some degree from the mystery. Why hadn't she told Roger? She supplied an answer swiftly enough.

"Roger travels a lot on business. I don't want him worrying about me or staying home on my account."

But it didn't ring true. Jenny should have known better than to feed me such a line. I know her too well. Whatever she said, I had Roger down as the protective, not to say possessive, type. Her real concern is that her independence is at stake if she asks the new man in her life to save her from the stalking nerd of the Lanes. And Jenny values her independence. Very highly.

"Besides," she added, 'what could he do?"

Several possibilities sprang to mind, but I didn't put the more extreme of them into words. After all, by the same token, what could I do? "He might recognize the bloke."

"He doesn't."

"How can you be sure?"

"We were together when chummy walked past us recently. On the footpath I mentioned. I asked Roger if he knew him. He said no. Definitely not."

"But you didn't explain the significance of the question."

"Obviously I didn't. Besides .. ."

"What?"

"I think I might know what chummy's connection with me is. And it isn't Roger."

"What, then?"

"You mean who."

"OK, who?"

"You, Toby."

"What?"

We both stopped and turned to look at each other. I couldn't make out Jenny's expression clearly in the shadow of her hat. But I dare say she could read me like a book. She's always been able to. And what she must have read was disbelief.

"Me?"

"That's right."

"But it can't be. I mean ... that doesn't make sense."

"Nevertheless .. ."

"How can you be sure?"

"I just am."

"OK." I relented. "What made you think it?"

Jenny glanced over her shoulder. She'd noticed before I had that a group of youngsters was approaching. With a touch on my arm, she steered me to the side of the promenade. The precaution turned out to be unnecessary, because the youngsters promptly dashed across the road towards the Odeon Cinema. But still she lowered her voice as she spoke. "Sophie, my assistant at Brimmers, often goes to the cafe where chummy hangs about. She's noticed him too. Well, last week, she spotted a video he'd bought lying by his elbow. He'd taken it out of the bag to look at. Guess what it was."

I turned the puzzle over in my mind for a moment, my gaze drifting towards the carcass of the West Pier, a hump of black against the blue-black sky. "Dead Against," I murmured.

"How did you know?" Jenny sounded genuinely surprised. Dead Against was the last of my all too few Hollywood engagements, released to vinegary reviews and absentee audiences all of eleven years ago. A sub-Hitchcockian thriller in which I play an English private detective pursuing a glamorous hit-woman in Los Angeles, Dead Against turned out aptly to have nothing going for it. My co-star, however, Nina Bronsky, has gone on to better things, which is why, according to Moira, some of her earlier films are suddenly making it to the video-store shelves.

Perhaps a royalties cheque eighteen months from now will quell my resentment. Then again, perhaps not.

"There aren't that many videos out there in any way connected with me, Jenny. Dead Against it had to be. But it could mean nothing. Maybe chummy's a Nina Bronsky fan. He sounds her type."

"Be serious, Toby. Please. I'm worried about this man."

"Well, if he's a fan of mine .. ." I shrugged. "I guess that makes me in some way responsible for him."

"I'm not blaming you, for God's sake. I just want this weirdo off my back."

"How can I accomplish that for you?"

"Go to the cafe tomorrow morning. See if you recognize him. Or if he recognizes you."

"I haven't changed that much in eleven years. He should recognize me."

"Then speak to him. Find out who he is; what he wants. See if you can't..."

"Get rid of him?"

"All I want him to do is lay off, Toby."

"Plus tell me why he's on your case, if he's on your case."

"It's something to do with you. It must be. The video proves that.

He's found out we used to be married and '

"We still are, actually. Married, I mean."

Jenny addressed the quibble with a seaward glance and a brief silence.

Then she said, "Will you do it?"

"Of course." I smiled. "Anything for you, Jenny."

I meant it. I still do. But there's more to it than that, as I suspect Jenny's well aware. The video alone proves nothing. If our duffel-coated friend is interested in me, he could also be interested in Roger. Jenny says she doesn't want to worry Roger. But maybe she doesn't quite trust Roger. Maybe she wants to find out on her own terms what this is really all about if it's about anything beyond the daily habits of a millinery fetishist. And maybe she knows she can rely on me to dig out the truth, because I still love her and haven't given up hope of making her love me all over again. She's playing a dangerous game, my once and future Jenny.