Reality and Dreams (10 page)

‘You
mean murdered?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am
not convinced about that. In fact, I haven’t thought on those lines,’ said Tom.
‘Should I?’

‘It’s
one of the possibilities,’ said the man.

‘And
you’re working on that possibility?’

‘Oh,
yes.’

‘She
could walk in at any time,’ Tom said. ‘Just any time. She must know the worry
she’s causing.’

The
papers had been full of Marigold’s disappearance, especially when she was
first definitely missed.

‘But,’
Tom added, ‘I’m not sure that she’d care about us, how we feel. In a way that
fact is a hopeful sign.’

Tom was
in fact thinking the deeply disloyal thought ‘Why should anyone
bother
to
murder Marigold?’

‘It may
be,’ he said to the officer, ‘she has just gone away to write a novel.’

‘Has
she expressed a desire to that effect?’

‘No.
But everyone is writing a novel, why not Marigold?’

‘You
feel she’s alive somewhere?’

‘I have
a hunch that she is, that’s all.’

‘Try,’
said the policeman, ‘to analyse your hunch. If you come up with anything, any
clue, let us know. We ourselves have no hunches.’

They
had been through Marigold’s diary, and had interviewed nineteen people who had
been interviewed by Marigold in connection with her research on redundancy.

‘You
say she seemed an eccentric.’

‘I didn’t
say that. I said she was a strange sort of woman.’

‘Attractive?’

‘Not
really. But all right in bed for a few hours.’

‘Why
did you have sex with her?’

‘She
invited me. She was out with it — just like that. No mimble-mamble.’

‘Why
did you accept?’

‘I felt
it was part of the interview, and I felt inclined. When you’ve lost your job
you need something to make you feel good.’

Another
man explained, ‘I knew she was the daughter of Tom Richards, the film
director. A name is a glamorous lay, isn’t it?’

One of
the women the police interviewed gave the information: ‘She was very eager to
know how much I spent on my clothes and beauty products, and how much I needed
those items to keep a job.’

‘Didn’t
you think it was a normal question for someone studying the economics of
employment and unemployment?’

‘Yes,
but she went on about it.’

‘Did
she suggest to you a lesbian relationship?’

‘No,
she didn’t. She wanted to know about the men, always the men, in my office
where I had been working. Did “redundant” mean only that one wouldn’t sleep
with them, and so on.’

‘And
did redundancy mean that in your case?’

‘No, it
didn’t. It just meant that eight of us lost our jobs.’

‘She
didn’t use her married name, apparently. Would you say that Marigold Richards
disliked, resented, men?’

‘Perhaps,
a bit. She didn’t look as if she could hold a man. But she was interested,
more, in sex. I was rather embarrassed by her questions. Don’t think I’m
inhibited by sex —’Neither am I,’ said the police officer. ‘Without sex none of
us would be here. But we’re trying to find a woman who’s vanished, and some
sort of motive…’

Cora
gave out the possibility that Johnny, her nearly ex-husband, might have induced
Marigold to join him in India where she presumed he still was in his flight
from materialism.

‘Why
should he do that?’

‘He was
in a phase of rejecting conventional ideas of beauty,’ Cora said.

The
policeman looked at good-looking Cora in amazement. ‘We’ll follow that line,’
he said. They did not need to follow it very far. Handsome Johnny Carr had returned
from India and was consoling Rose Wood-stock in Tom’s absence.

Tom confided to the
taxi-driver Dave as they cruised the night-lit streets: ‘Marigold,’ he said, ‘is
a wrecker. But in a way I’m closer to my wife, Claire, than I’ve been since we
were young. Claire feels badly: her only child. At least I have Cora. And I can’t
help saying to myself, thank God Cora is safe.’

‘Do you
mean that Marigold’s a wrecker or that she’s a victim — which?’ said Dave.

‘I don’t
think anything,’ Tom said. ‘But I can’t cast Marigold in the role of victim.’

‘Some
people suspect you,’ said Dave.

‘I
know. I can feel it in the air. Why should I want to do away with Marigold, I’d
like to know?’

‘Blackmail,
they say. They say she knew too much.’

‘Too
much about what?’

‘About
you and Rose Woodstock and the little actress Jeanne somebody.’

‘I have
no secrets of that kind. Jeanne is a wasp. I’ve actually dropped Rose. The
worry of it all has put me right off her. And do you know what? — She’s left
her husband entirely and has moved in with Cora’s husband Johnny.’

‘I saw
them, yes, in a magazine. They look a good-looking couple.’

‘What
feelings can she have, with her husband out of work?’

‘He was
already out of work when she was with you.’

‘Thanks
for reminding me. He was the last person we know of to see Marigold. She taped
a sample interview with him for her study of redundancy. They had dinner
together. Then — then nothing. No bed, no sex. Apparently the subject didn’t
arise; do you believe it? Nothing. The rest is silence. And where are my
friends? Where are they?’

‘Are
you sure,’ said Dave, ‘you aren’t imagining things? Not everyone is gossiping
about you. They don’t all believe in rumours. Far from it.’

After a
while Dave added, ‘In any case maybe the truth is that she left of her own
free-will to make a break from you. Your name alone is overpowering. Think of
it.’

The
press had made much of the ‘relations’ between Marigold and Tom.

‘All my
so-called friends have talked to the press. In the old days,’ Tom said, ‘there
would have been plenty of friends stop by to see me after all the fuss and talk
in the press, on the T.V. They would have called me up from wherever they were.
Now all they can do is make publicity for themselves by giving interviews. “Marigold
as I knew her,” “Marigold has something to fear,” “Has she lost her memory?” So
on, so on. If Binkie Beaumont was still alive he would have rung me, asked me
round for a drink. He was a powerful theatre producer, Tennent’s. The world’s
biggest queer but very abounding in hospitality there in Lord North Street. He
was convinced his house had been a brothel to serve the Houses of Parliament.
There were little wash-basins in some of the rooms, which Binkie just left
there, and also some parliamentary division bells had been installed. So I
suppose he was right. It was a brothel or the house of someone’s mistress.
There one met
tout le monde.
But Binkie was afraid of death. He didn’t
like the subject or even the word. This sometimes limited his choice of plays.
All the same, Binkie would have called me up to show solidarity. But Binkie’s
dead. Essentially, Dave, a person consists of memories.’

‘Are we
born with memories?’ Dave said.

‘There
is a theory of that nature. It well might be.’

‘I just
wondered. Sometimes I seem to know of things I couldn’t possibly have
experienced. And sometimes the children come out with something that makes you
wonder: Wherever did they pick that up from? As if they knew things from a time
before they were born.’

‘Children
are quite psychic,’ Tom said. ‘Very intuitive. They can tune into your
thoughts, it’s a bit disquieting. You should try always to give them happy
memories. It’s the only thing you can leave to your children with any certainty
— happy memories.’

‘I lost
a lot of friends,’ said Dave. ‘And now they’ve gone, they’re only memories. And
I missed the chance of talking to them about a great number of subjects. In my
trade one meets people. Now it’s too late.’

‘Don’t
you make new friends?’ Tom said.

‘No, I
don’t seem to, Tom. You excepted. The people who get in a taxi, even the
regulars, don’t talk. They sit back and close in with themselves.’

Tom,
also, was now closed in with himself. He was thinking how afraid everyone was
since Marigold’s disappearance, to get mixed up with him. Just in case … Tennessee
Williams, he thought, would have called me from the States. He often called on
the phone, often and often. He would have been a true friend. Tom remembered
the last time he met Tennessee, at a party in New York in the sixties, at
Edward Albee’s place. The party was given for the Russian Ballet but they didn’t
turn up. Not allowed. Noel Coward, still then very much alive, had slithered
over to him with that walk of his, ‘Can you
really
understand Albee’s
plays?’ he had asked Tom, almost within ear-shot of his host. Tom had replied, ‘I’m
fascinated by Albee, in fact.’ ‘Are you really, darling?’

Tom
said to Dave, ‘Auden would have asked me to dinner without mentioning Marigold.
He would have gone out of his way to do so. The last time I saw Auden was in
his house at Kirchstetten outside Vienna. I found Wystan going through
different editions of Agatha Christie, marking them up at the places where she
deleted her colour-racism or softened her anti-semitism over the years. We
thought of making a film of Proust. It’s almost impossible. There was a film
but it was no good. It wasn’t Proust. Did you ever read any Proust?’

‘No, I
haven’t,’ Dave said.

‘Have a
try,’ said Tom. ‘The English translation is better than the original French,
many people say. I’ll bring you a volume. Auden agreed that Proust’s
twelve-volume novel was economic compared with Joyce’s
Finnegans Wake
or
Ulysses.
He thought Joyce long-winded and ill-mannered towards the
public. Auden himself had wonderful manners. Except, of course, when pushed.’

‘You
should write your memoirs,’ Dave said.

‘I mean
to do so as soon as we have definite news of Marigold. Until then, I can do
nothing with my memories except go over the people I’ve seen more recently,
the world I’ve been living in lately.’

‘That’s
an idea,’ Dave said. ‘You might hit on a clue to her whereabouts. Memory’s a
wonderful thing.’

‘I’m
like a drowning man sometimes,’ Tom said. ‘The events of my life flash past in
my mind. Perhaps I’ll remember something useful without any effort.’

‘My
sympathy to Mrs. Richards,’ Dave said. ‘I’ll tell Claire.’

Claire woke about four
every morning with a sudden idea about the whereabouts of Marigold. Had she
gone on a climbing trip to Nepal? Had she returned to the cottage in Provence
she had once rented for a holiday? Or was she in the Haute Savoie on some
campsite pretending to be, or imagining she was, Tom’s hamburger girl? Claire
would resolve to investigate all the possibilities that occurred to her in the
middle of the night, would settle down to sleep restlessly, but in the morning
when she woke again she would feel paralysed by the improbability, the
futility, of her ideas.

The
thought that Marigold might be somewhat out of her mind had taken a hold on
Tom. He was convinced that if she was still alive she had lost her memory.
When Claire said, one morning, ‘In the middle of the night it came to me that
Marigold might be looking for your hamburger girl, the real one, perhaps
impersonating her. But how could she?’

‘Why
not?’ said Tom. ‘Why not? She was always resentful of that dream of mine. She
could well have been driven by rancour. Let’s go to that campsite and see.’

It was
the end of September. ‘Let’s see,’ Tom said. In his film the campsite had been
located in Scotland. It had required very few shots. In the film Jeanne had
stood over her makeshift stove stolidly making hamburgers. She had only once
raised her eyes. That was when she caught sight of the older man looking at
her, watching. She had dropped her eyelids again, intent on her hamburgers,
dishing them out to the holiday makers as they queued up outside her tiny
kiosk.

The
campsite in the Haute Savoie was still there, a number of trailers were lined
up at the bottom of the field. Jeanne’s kiosk was there, shuttered up. The camp
itself was closed. At the hotel nearby where they stopped for the night, Tom
showed a photograph of Marigold. The owner, at the reception desk shook his
head, but his wife, a large woman who stood looking over his shoulder said, ‘One
moment. Perhaps … Recently, I don’t know … We have so many clients coming
and going…’ They looked up Marigold’s names, both married and unmarried, in
the register dating back long before Marigold’s disappearance. There was no
sign of her there.

Nothing
was certain. Nothing was resolved. Tom and Claire ate a delicious meal at the
hotel; enjoying it in spite of their anxiety.

‘Why on
earth should we distress ourselves like this?’ Tom said. ‘What have we done?’

‘I,
too, am asking myself, What are we doing here?’ Claire said.