Reality and Dreams (3 page)

It was left to Cora, the
family beauty, to break the news to her father that he had to go back into
hospital for a spinal operation. Cora was now in England, staying with Claire.
She had no hope of a new contract with Channel Four, and her husband, handsome
Johnny, three weeks after his redundancy was declared, had disappeared to India
with his severance pay. Cora did not expect to see him again.

Before
telling Tom what the specialist had said about his last X-rays, ‘We have to
operate on his back,’ Cora told him about her husband’s recent defection. She
knew her father’s rages, both of frustration and indignation, and decided that
the latter, if exhausted first, might mitigate the former.

In his
sober moments he agreed with Claire about the irascibility of his nature.
Shortly after she had married him Claire observed, ‘At times you act like a
female hedgehog or a porcupine that has been sexually violated. All quills out,
running around. A ravished porcupine, that’s what you are at such times.’

‘I
know,’ he said.

It was
one of these attacks that Claire feared when she sent Cora into his bedroom to
tell him that he had to go back to hospital. His sense of frustration was
already near the boil since he couldn’t yet walk properly. He crawled round
the room slowly on an elbow-crutch. What incensed him most was when the
visiting doctor told him how lucky he was to be alive, and reminded him that he
had had a very bad fall.

Cora
had a second mission: this was to tell Tom that the backers had withdrawn from
the film. It was all folded up. The actors had gone home and Tom’s worked-over
script (for he never had a full-scale screenwriter, but himself wrote a lot of
the films he directed) was lying downstairs in his study. He was still unable
to go downstairs, but Claire felt he would have to know sooner or later, about
the odd silence surrounding his proposed film provisionally entitled
The
Hamburger Girl.
This provisional title was believed by all to be ambiguous
and Tom certainly intended to change it. He was beginning to wonder about the
lack of news, except for kind messages and flowers, from the area of that film.
Cora knew he would choke with indignation when he heard it had folded up. And
so she preferred to channel some of his ire into frustration first.

‘Pa,’
she said straight out, ‘you need an operation on your spine next week, or you’ll
never walk right again. You’re booked into the clinic.’

He was
standing in the middle of his vast bedroom, leaning on two elbow-crutches.

To her
amazement he said, ‘All right.’

And
when she went on to tell him about the work-stoppage on his film he said, ‘Good.
They would only have made a mess of it, Cora, without me.’

Claire
and the nurse Julia, listening outside the bedroom door, were equally
astonished.

‘Tell
me,’ said Tom, ‘how Johnny came to get to India. Who paid his fare? Did you?’

‘In
actual fact he took his redundancy money. It was quite a lot. Some thousands of
pounds. Pa, I wasn’t going to tell you, but he’s gone.’

‘What
did he give to you before he left?’

‘Nothing.
He just took off.’ Cora was crying now.

‘Let
him go,’ said her father. ‘Don’t ever take him back. You can get a divorce. He
wasn’t ever your type and now you know it. Little egocentric swine.’

‘Johnny
was so good-looking,’ said Cora. ‘We made a fine couple, let’s face it.’

‘He
would never have looks as good as yours. Let’s face it,’ said Tom to his really
beautiful daughter. Only to see her move half across the room was an aesthetic
delight.

‘India,’
she said. ‘I said, Why India? He said, “To see my guru and a couple of temples
in the south, and get lost to this materialistic hell. It’s good-bye,” he said,
“for always. I’m not coming back. You can sell the sapphire ring. We can have a
divorce any time you like. It’s good-bye.”‘

‘Why
are you crying?’ said Tom. ‘With that sort, redundant is the very word. He is a
non-necessary person.’

‘He
took only a few clothes,’ said Cora. ‘And I took the rest and made a bonfire in
the garden. I gave away his shoes, they were quite decent.’

‘You
did right. He’ll want to come back. But don’t have him. Did he take the
door-key?’

‘I suppose
so.’

‘Change
the lock. He’ll try to come back when his money’s run out.’

‘Oh I
don’t think he’ll come back.’

‘Take
my advice,’ said Tom. ‘I am old and experienced. I am old. I was already
twenty when I went to the opening night of
The Mousetrap.
Not only am I
old enough to be your father, I am your father. You should listen to me.’

When the day began to wear
away Cora got ready to leave. For Tom it was the worst time of every day since
his accident. He would quote Longfellow to describe his evening mood:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

‘I used
to love this time of day,’ he said before Cora left. ‘The workers and staff
would go home and the leading members of the cast and the directors would
gather for a drink and discuss the day’s work and plan the next day’s. Now, it’s
only the depressing news on the television. Claire comes with a tray of
terrible food. She thinks the new cook’s wonderful. Her name is also Claire.
This cook-Claire should have her ass fired right out of our kitchen with her
pretentious dishes, her goulash and her hogwash and her crème-caramels furnished
by the supermarket. But Claire won’t have a word said about her Hungarian cook.
I don’t care what she’s suffered. Once a communist always a communist. She
thinks she’s our equal and we should be grateful for her presence under my
roof.’

Cora
sat down again. ‘I’ll stay with you. Let’s have a drink,’ she said.

‘With
all these antibiotics I’m not supposed to drink.’

‘You
can have one drink,’ Cora said. ‘The doctor told Claire and Claire told me.’

‘My
wife has a man,’ said Tom.

‘Claire
has a man? Who?’

‘I don’t
know.’

‘But if
it’s true can you blame her,’ Cora said. ‘You have so many women.’

‘That’s
part of my profession,’ Tom said. ‘Her profession is wife.’

‘You
don’t sound very convincing.’

‘Well I’m
not convinced, really. I don’t believe in convictions. They are generally
hypocrisy.’

Claire was on the
house-phone to Tom. ‘A fax has just come in. They want to continue with the
film with Stan Shephard directing. They must have found the money.

‘Let
him direct, I’ve lost interest,’ said Tom. ‘Wait a minute,’ said Claire,
sensing he was about to hang up. ‘They want to change the title to:
I’ll
Kill You If You Die.
I think that’s rather —’

‘No,’
said Tom. ‘The title of the movie is provisionally
The Hamburger Girl.
I
don’t like
I’ll Kill You If You Die.
It ties down the meaning to a
single incident, a single phase in the film. Tell them No.’

‘From
what they say they want to reconstruct the film in that sense. Do you want me
to bring up the fax?’

‘No.
Just reply No.’

‘No
what? No to the whole film, no to the new director or just no to the title?’

‘No to
everything.’

‘You
can’t do that. They have rights to the film. They have script rights, title
rights, director rights. You know they have.’

‘Do
they ask how I’m keeping?’

‘Oh
yes, they say they hope you’re improving.’

‘If
they have rights to everything, why are they faxing me?’

‘Out of
courtesy I suppose,’ said Claire.

‘Oh,
no, they’re not. Oh, no. On second thoughts, don’t reply. Don’t answer. If they
have all these rights they won’t bother me again. If they don’t they’ll write
again. You should ask Fortescue-Brown the lawyer in any case. He got up the
contract, let him get on with it.’

This
time he hung up before Claire could say a word. The nurse, Julia, had a large
over-toothed smile on her face. ‘The good news,’ she said, ‘is that you don’t
have to undergo another operation. There was a misdiagnosis, too hasty, but
fortunately the surgeon noticed in time. It was a question of the X-rays.’

‘Is
this the surgeon like a ghost who never comes into a room and never goes out of
it but just materialises and vanishes?’

‘That’s
him. Mr. Gladstone Smith.’

‘Oh, a
Mr. Smith. Does he know what he’s talking about?’

‘He
certainly does. You don’t need to go back to hospital. You’re going to be all
right.’

‘As
soon as I hear a bit of news these days,’ said Tom, ‘someone comes along to
contradict it. My film was cancelled now it’s going ahead. My son-in-law was
looking for a job but now he’s left my daughter and gone for a holiday in
India. First I had to go back to hospital and now I don’t.’

‘That’s
life,’ said Julia.

‘No, it’s
not ordinary life. But let me tell you that for people in the film business,
yes, it is life. Nothing with us is consistent.’

CHAPTER
FOUR

Tom’s daughter by his
second marriage, Marigold, and her husband James, lived (when he wasn’t on his
literary travels) in a large cottage in a village in Surrey. They were both
very serious people — too serious for Tom, but who was to say that he was the
just arbiter of other people’s character? Simply because he was always ready to
assume that part, and others only too ready to listen to him with dazzled conviction
is not to say that Tom was always right (although generally there was something
in what he said). When James was away Marigold lived alone, but at this moment
she had James’s elder brother, Ralph and his wife Ruth to stay with her. Ralph
and Ruth had come down from London at Marigold’s invitation to get over the
trauma of Ralph’s redundancy and to sort themselves out. They were in their
early thirties, with two children away at school. The fact of the approaching
school holidays gave Marigold a sense of confidence that, because of the
children coming home, the couple could not stay with her very long as otherwise
they might have been tempted to.

In the
meantime Marigold indulged her gift for philosophising, if not sermonising.
After supper, the very first night of their stay, she spoke.

The two
in-laws sat on a dismal blue sofa, side by side. Marigold, worthy as any woman
or man in the works of George Eliot, unlovely, graceless, sat in an upright
chair opposite. (How had Tom managed to conceive her? And Claire, so
emotionally imaginative?) Marigold spoke:

‘Perhaps
nobody,’ Marigold said, ‘should take on responsibilities which would demand
more expenditure than would be gained from the dole and the income support
schemes. Full pay has a surplus which should not be used for necessities such
as house purchases or school fees unless a private income covers those expenditures.
In other words, if all lived austerely, redundancy would bring no shock to the
person or the family. My point number two is that employed persons should have
an alternative source of income, for example, the income deriving from the
invested surplus of a good salary not put to full expenditure. My third point
is that every breadwinner should have in mind if not at hand an alternative
career of a robust nature to step into if the first one fails.’

(Perhaps
Marigold’s only resemblance to Tom was that she indulged in monologues. But was
this inherited or only copied?)

Ralph
said, ‘It’s too late for me, all this advice.’ He had been a manager of liaison
personnel in a vast branch of an international electronics firm. He had been
laid off with twenty-three others. Ralph looked at his watch, saw that it was
six o’clock, time for a drink, went over to the drinks tray and helped himself
to a gin and tonic. He said, ‘Can I get you girls anything?’