The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (48 page)

‘I don’t think you’re ridiculous at all. If anything, I envy you. I wish I had your energy.’

‘You have got my energy. Everyone’s got energy. But most people’s energy is all used up by their anxieties. People are far crazier than we ever guess.’

‘Don’t you have anxieties?’

‘No,’ says Aidan. ‘But I’m an asshole.’

‘You say that like an American.’

‘Like I said, I’m one-hundred per cent self-invention. I’m still working on it. I’m a work in progress.’

‘Me too.’

Aidan reaches out his hand for Henry to shake.

‘Deal?’

‘Okay. Deal. For now.’

They shake. Then they walk back to Piccadilly Circus without speaking. They walk side by side, in step, newly bonded. For Henry everything to do with his job has changed.

The crew are on the island photographing Eros.

‘Got you some cover,’ says Ray.

Christina looks at Henry with concern.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. Sorry to go off like that. But now that Aidan’s explained to me that he just can’t help being a prick, I’ve got over it.’

All eyes turn to Aidan Massey.

‘What can I say?’ He spreads his arms and grins. ‘I’m a prick. Let’s do the piece to camera again.’

55

Is she reading it now? Is she raising her eyebrows at the language, or is she yawning, rolling her eyes? Reading it beginning to end, or putting it down, doing other things, fitting it into her day like an unloved chore? In the school hall, rehearsing his Year Eight actors, Alan Strachan prompts the thin high voices as they struggle with Shakespeare’s verse, his mind on his own lines. He sees her brown eyes scanning the black type, her fingers turning the next page. And feeling what?

James Shaw can’t stop swinging his arms as he speaks.

‘One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;

One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.’

Snorts of suppressed laughter greet the eagerly-awaited line. Alan wonders yet again if he was foolish not to cut it. On the other hand you could say that through this one line Shakespeare has entered the every day speech of these privileged but illiterate children. ‘Sir, Harry has two bosoms, sir, I’ve seen them.’ The chief target of the jibe is Mrs Digby, who is now widely known as Two Bosoms.

Alan is playing the scene for comedy in the crudest possible way. Katie Beale shuffles sideways two steps with each line, heel-toe, heel-toe.

‘Nay, good Lysander, for my sake, my dear,

Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.’

‘Now go after her, James. Heel toe, heel toe. Keep facing the audience.’

Shakespeare as slapstick. But it works. Even in rehearsal they get a laugh. Nothing like laughter to boost a performer’s confidence.

‘For God’s sake keep your arms still, James. I’m going to tie them down.’

‘Sorry sir.’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘Don’t know sir.’

‘Here. Hold this.’

He throws the boy a cushion.

‘Now do it again.’

They’re not bad kids. At least they find it funny. No one’s told them yet that Shakespeare’s educational.

She must have read it by now. Her gaze swept the forty-three pages like a searchlight exposing them to pitiless scrutiny. In this form no one but himself has read it, it has lived all its life in a warm dark room, protected from the bright lights and the keen stripping winds beyond the door. Now his baby has been thrust naked into the world.

An adolescent attempt to shock. The plot only too predictable. The characters mere posturing stereotypes. Not that she’ll say any of it. Really liked your play, Alan. No, really. It’s so unusual. Never read anything like it before. Don’t really know what I think. It’s different.

Oh, fuck. Why did I ever give it to her? Nice going, Alan. First you blub in front of her then you give her your crap play to read.

Only it’s not crap. This is the madness with which Alan lives all the time these days. He’s a genius tied to a fool, back to back, elbows to elbows, shins to shins. However many times he spins about the genius can never see the fool, but nor can he escape him. Sometimes in the mirror of his solitude he catches the wry smile of the genius, sometimes the vacant mouthing of the fool.

This play is startlingly original, vital, funny and heartbreaking. A central device of powerful simplicity, an hour in the disintegration of a love affair interwoven with, counterpointed by, an hour of sexual foreplay. The final breach between the lovers coincides with the release of orgasm. This is highly charged work, no?

Yamma yamma yamma says the fool. It’s a brain-wank, buddy. You’re living in la-la land.

Christ she’s called Elizabeth. She’ll think I named my heroine after her. I’m this sad loser with sick fantasies of what I want to do to her. She won’t even let me in the house.

Just tell me I’m not insane. Tell me I can write.

Why do I want this so much if it’s all a delusion? Why does the act of forming the lines in my head excite me so much that my bowels melt and I have to run to the lavatory unbuckling my belt as I go? Don’t tell me that’s not the real thing.

‘But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy

Lie further off—’

The bell rings.

‘Good, Katie. I like the little push. Next time try giving him a good hard shove. Thank you, James. You can let go of the cushion now. Same time Wednesday, everyone.’

His actors clatter out of the hall, laughing and jostling. Alan replaces the cushion, moves the lectern back to mid-stage for tomorrow morning’s assembly, switches out lights.

Shakespeare had it made. His own company of actors, a theatre to fill, no time to fuck about. Write, rehearse, perform. Imagine Shakespeare wetting himself because some girl he fancied was reading a play of his. Who cares what she thinks? His actors are already learning their lines, he’s halfway through the play after next, the show goes on. If it doesn’t work, fix it. Listen to the audience, follow the tears and the laughter. That’s the way to write. Not this lonely terror.

So like love. The fear of being without talent so like the fear of never being loved. The one a surrogate for the other, no doubt. The hunger for genius a hunger for love.

Just say good things about my play. But mean what you say, lady. I don’t want pity. Only totally sincere awestruck admiration will do. Is that too much to ask? Oh, and let me fuck you afterwards. An awestruck fuck, that would truly be the cherry on the cake.

Yamma yamma yamma. Dream on.

He weaves his way between the slow-moving procession of parents’ cars to the main school. Jimmy Hall is on pick-up duty.

‘Hello, Jimmy. How’s things?’

‘Not so good, Alan. Actually, since you ask, I’m bloody livid.’

The last thing Alan wants to do is listen to Jimmy Hall’s catalogue of disappointments in life, given that to all young male teachers in the school Jimmy Hall represents a hideous warning of what they might themselves one day become. But a moment or two is only polite.

‘What’s got you going, Jimmy?’

‘You know I do work from time to time for the local rag? Well, I turned in a piece on Saturday that was something special. You know, though I say it myself, it had a touch of true artistry. The editor loved it. And what happens? The nationals nick my story! The big boys come barging in and re-work it and get it all wrong needless to say, and my little piece is left to die the death.’

‘I’m sorry, Jimmy. It’s a tough world.’

‘They’re killers,’ says Jimmy Hall bitterly. ‘They’re vampires.’

Alan collects his work bag from his classroom and leaves for the staff car park by the library door. He doesn’t want to meet Liz Dickinson picking up Alice. She expects him some time after seven. The short exchange with Jimmy Hall has depressed him. Easy to laugh at his sad little dreams of journalistic glory, but why should his own dreams be any different?

Though I say it myself it had a touch of true artistry.

Jimmy Hall says it himself because there’s no one else to say it. Just like me. Though Liz may be kind. Except kind has no value. Only true has value. But hey, I’ll settle for kind.

As always it takes a long time to make the turning out of the school lane onto the main road. At this time of day the A27 is a ceaseless flow of home-going commuters, and it’s a rare driver who slows and flashes his lights to let waiting cars in from side roads. Alan turns on the radio and someone on the PM programme is talking about paternity leave. Tony Blair has decided to take two weeks off to help look after his new baby son, and John Prescott is to be in charge. The Downing Street website has published the first pictures of baby Leo and has crashed under the massive demand.

Why? All the newspapers will carry the pictures tomorrow. You look at a picture of a baby and then what? People are strange.

Onto the main road at last and into the ever-flowing river of human desolation. Not that I know they’re all miserable. They may be happy as Larry in their cars, singing all the way home. The driver behind is right on my tail. What am I supposed to do, buddy? Ram the car in front?

Gentle friend for love and courtesy lie further off.

She won’t be reading it now. She’ll be driving Alice home. She’s read it by now or not at all. Off the main road at last and up the lane to Glynde.

Fucking typical. There’s a car parked in his customary parking space. In fact, a police car. As he goes to his front door a policeman appears from his neighbour’s house.

‘Has something happened to Mrs Temple-Morris?’ says Alan.

‘Did you know her, sir?’

‘No, not really. Just as a neighbour.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘On Friday. What’s happened to her?’

‘Bad news, I’m afraid. She passed away.’

‘Good God! I didn’t even know she was ill.’

‘The newspaper boy raised the alarm.’ The policeman gives a shrug. ‘The newspapers were jamming up inside.’

‘She seemed fine when I saw her.’ Then he realizes she was not fine at all. ‘What did she do? Take an overdose?’

‘Something like that. We’ll know more when the coroner submits his report.’

‘Has her husband been told?’

‘Husband, sir? There’s no husband.’

‘No husband?’

‘Never been married, sir. We’ve been checking next of kin. Turns out that was just her little story. Would you be available tomorrow, sir? Just for a short statement.’

‘Yes. Of course.’

Alan goes on into his house, profoundly shaken. Not grief at his neighbour’s death: shock at how little he knew her. He sees her now, bathed in the flattering light of his own over-easy assumptions, an ageing woman with too much make-up on her face and not enough to fill her day. The husband she had invented. The smile she synthesized. The over-cheerful voice she faked. All to avoid the shame of being exposed as a lonely, unwanted, fearful, fragile human being.

God in his mercy lend her grace.

Where’s that from? Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Another suicide.

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye

Funny how some lines stick in your mind for ever. Singing in her song she died. Not an overdose, then. More like a fairy curse. Go on seeing the world in your shadowy mirror, lady. If you turn round and look at the real thing, you die. So maybe that’s what she did. Maybe Mrs Temple-Morris took one look at the real world, the world in which she had no husband and no reason to smile, and not liking what she saw chose to leave by the nearest exit.

I can use that, he thinks, the structure of a new play already forming in his mind. A modern Lady of Shalott. A lonely death unredeemed by iambic tetrameters.

He showers and changes, preparing for the coming evening, in the course of which the world’s opinion – which is to say all that is not inside his own mind and under his own control – will pronounce judgement on his play. On his aspirations to be a writer. On his estimation of himself.

My aspiration to be a writer. Which is to say my aspiration to live. My act of engagement with life. To be a writer is to live fully, to be an explorer, to be one of the few who are awake in a world of sleepwalkers. And yet all the time, separated from me by a few inches of wood and plaster, a life has been ending in solitude and silence.

This is the source of his shame. He knew nothing. He never tried to know. He bought the fiction she created, out of pity and laziness.

That was just her little story.

Mrs Temple-Morris a writer too, in her way. Her early work an entertainment for the neighbours, a conventional tale in the comic mode. Her mature work an unheard cry of despair, a tragedy.