Present Times Page 5

  ‘York Arms, Buckingham, or the Devonshire?’ he said.

  ‘At home,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Just got back or stopped on the way?’

  ‘I’ll leave it here,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Will you?’

  Pippy Booth returned to his typing.

  ‘Have they been in to take it up?’

  ‘They haven’t.’ His fingers rippled on.

  Attercliffe laid the copy on the desk and, through the only window in the room, high in the wall, observed a light in the old hay-loft above the site of an abandoned stables across the road: a man was standing at an easel, painting.

  ‘How long has Holford’s Loft been used?’

  Pippy Booth looked up. ‘He was there this afternoon.’ The telephone rang: Booth picked it up, listened, put it down, and added, ‘Fairy, going by the way he stands.’

  ‘Seen him before?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘How are you fixed for features?’

  ‘Pug-eared footballer tells how he did it all on Bennies?’

  ‘A different activity altogether.’

  ‘The City’s not being sued by the Equal Opportunities Commission?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Front-row forward says the lads at the club won’t give her a chance.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Want a photographer?’

  ‘I’ll ask Billy.’

  ‘How soon can I have it?’

  ‘End of the week.’

  ‘All right.’

  The typing recommenced.

  ‘Is “referred” with two “r”s or one?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Amazing.’ He corrected the sheet before him. ‘On a Sunday neet every word looks different.’

  Attercliffe said, ‘I wonder how he earns a living.’

  ‘Wonder on.’ Booth, to indicate his concentration, drew his chair to the desk.

  The artist’s look went back to the easel: a brush was dabbed at a palette.

  Attercliffe went back up the steps and, drawing his overcoat about him, stepped out to the street. As he reached the car he glanced at the window again: from this perspective all that could be seen were the upper edge of a canvas, the stem of the easel, and the top of the painter’s head.

  5

  36 Queensgate was, he discovered, a block of flats which stood in a sidestreet off the main thoroughfare of the town; the bell for number 7 had two names beside it, ‘Gardner. P.’ and ‘Willis. H.’, and, when he rang, a woman’s voice sounded over the intercom and said, ‘It’s for you, Phyl,’ and then, ‘Come up.’

  The latch was released and as he entered the hall a door closed above his head; a moment later a tousled, red-haired figure, in jeans and a sweater, a suede jacket over its arm, ran down a flight of stairs and announced, ‘Second floor up. I’m Heather.’ A round-cheeked, green-eyed face gazed out from beneath the mop of ruffled hair. ‘Got your notebook?’

  Attercliffe said, ‘That’s right. I have.’

  ‘The photographer got here before you.’

  The figure darted off; the outer door banged: when Attercliffe reached the second floor the door to the flat had been reopened.

  He stepped inside a narrow hall and closed the door behind him.

  At the opposite end of the hall he entered a living-room which looked directly to the street below.

  A short, balding, square-shouldered figure, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, with a bag slung across its back, was taking photographs with the aid of a flashlight.

  A ball of light exploded.

  ‘Shan’t be a sec, comrade,’ this figure said while, attired in a sweater and neatly-pressed trousers, her hair drawn back by a ribbon, a second figure, framed against the window, said, ‘There’s coffee. If you’d like it. Help yourself.’

  A tray stood on a table. Turned towards the fireplace was a three-piece suite.

  Attercliffe poured out some coffee. ‘Talk, comrade,’ the photographer said. The camera clicked for several seconds.

  Attercliffe moved his head in line with the crouching back and said, ‘I met a girl called Heather.’

  ‘We share the flat.’ The cheeks were rouged, the lips painted. ‘We’ve been here several years.’

  ‘Same line of business?’ the photographer said, winding on his film.

  ‘Has been. Though now,’ she went on, ‘she works in a shop.’

  ‘What sort of a shop?’

  ‘A florist’s.’

  ‘Hard life.’

  ‘Very,’ Phyllis said. ‘Had difficulty finding it, Frank?’ she added.

  ‘None,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘In a central location.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I had to give up an appointment to be here,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing important?’ Attercliffe asked, at which she said, ‘It could be. Still. Prior commitment.’

  ‘That should do it.’ The photographer straightened, picked up a cup of coffee, drank, set it down, drew his bag across his belly, picked up a roll of film from the table, turned to the door, called, ‘Mine not to reason, mine but to shoot and fly,’ and, with a wave in Attercliffe’s direction – ‘See you at the office, comrade. Charmed, Miss Gardner’ – he was out of the door.

  The flat door banged.

  ‘He’s very jolly.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘Communist?’

  ‘Far from it.’ Attercliffe shook her hand.

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Quite a card.’

  ‘He is.’ Having released her hand, he waited for her to sit down in an adjoining chair.

  ‘Dougie is a great fan of yours.’ She smiled again.

  ‘I didn’t know he knew me.’

  She said, ‘He told me of one game where, when you were sent off, the crowd invaded the pitch. You were quite a hero.’

  ‘Those were the days,’ Attercliffe said, ‘when the game was played exclusively by miners.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘How did you get into reporting?’ She leaned back, her hands, clenched loosely together, wrapped around one knee.

  ‘Fredericks was a commentator on television and took me on as his assistant. I was one of the few footballers at that time who’d had an education.’

  ‘What school did you go to?’

  ‘King Edward VI Grammar. The week I signed on the headmaster sent me a note which read: “Attercliffe, you have let the school down.” It was a rugby union school and believed in amateur sport and had no time for professionals.’ He added, ‘I see by the file your agent sent you’re appearing in a play at the Phoenix.’

  ‘I’m scheduled to do a series for television and wanted something to do for the next six weeks. The part I have is the eldest of three unmarried sisters. Previously, I’ve only played tarts so I thought, for six weeks, it ought to be worth it.’ She smiled. ‘Mr Fredericks said you write.’

  He indicated his notebook, now on his knees, and the ballpoint pen in his hand.

  ‘Other than that. A play.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘Not much.’ She paused. ‘He says he admired the film.’

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ Attercliffe said. ‘He says it’s very good.’

  ‘It’s the area I’m hoping to move into. The cinema is dying in Britain. And the bit that isn’t, like television, is so parochial, it has no meaning anywhere else. It doesn’t,’ she continued, ‘turn to the larger issues.’

  ‘What are the larger issues?’

  Attercliffe wrote for several seconds.

  ‘The political issues.’ She added, ‘I’d like to get to London.’ She gestured round. ‘This is merely an interregnum.’

  ‘How many “r”s in that?’

  She laughed. ‘Since it’ll be seen all over I’m hoping this film will give me the break I want.’ She added, ‘I’m only waiting for it to be shown in New Y
ork. I could even,’ she went on, ‘get out of the series. I haven’t signed the contract yet. It means, if it were successful, committing myself to two years in this country, though I could, if I were abroad, come back for three or four months.’

  She crossed her legs; he saw, in the diagonal light from the window, how much care she’d taken with her make-up: the rougeing beneath the cheekbones, the rendering of the corners of her mouth – wasted, he reflected, on the bushy-bearded Walters.

  ‘Was the appointment you gave up for another part?’

  ‘It could have been.’

  ‘Television?’

  ‘The theatre.’

  ‘Do you prefer the theatre?’

  ‘Can’t make a living at it. Not round here. Nor in London. Really,’ her hands were clasped again, ‘if this film were a success I’d stand a chance to get out of the country.’

  ‘Do you want to get out?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘The problems,’ he said, ‘I have to cope with are more than enough to keep me going.’

  ‘Dougie says you and your wife are living apart.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I know the man she’s living with.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He’s a lecher.’

  ‘I understood he sold motor-cars.’

  She laughed. After a moment she said, ‘He’s been round here.’ She glanced across. ‘Dougie threatened to throw him out.’ She added, ‘On the other hand, I’m surprised you’d want to go on living here. Don’t you believe this country is finished? I don’t want to sit in a place like this pecking at the crumbs.’

  He had the impression of a presence other than her own not so much inhabiting as standing over the room: she looked to the door.

  ‘If I had a choice I’d leave tomorrow.’ She thrust herself back in her chair. ‘This place is so devitalised. It’s the backwater to a backwater that’s already silted up. You can hardly breathe. We live like rats, scrabbling at the refuse. One or two rich ones, like Pickersgill, but most of them the sleazy variety you get in any ordinary sewer.’

  He wrote again, not sure how much of this he ought to record.

  ‘You don’t use a tape-machine?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Have you done many interviews before?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘Usually of the Dougie variety.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘If I send you two tickets will you come to the opening on Thursday?’ She laughed. ‘You won’t have to write a review. And I won’t,’ she concluded, ‘hold you to this.’

  ‘This’ll be in next week,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘In time for the reviews.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you want some more coffee?’ She got up from her chair, took his cup, saw he hadn’t drunk a great deal, and added, ‘I’ll get you another.’

  She went out of the room. Her voice called, ‘Anything to eat?’ and when she reappeared she added, ‘We could always go out.’

  ‘It’s quieter in here,’ he said.

  She filled a fresh cup from a percolator standing by the window; having set it down she said, ‘It’d be possible to join one of the subsidised companies if I went to London. I’ve one or two friends, directors, mainly. Do you go to the theatre much?’

  Having retaken her position in the adjoining chair, she propped her hands beneath her chin.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘What’s this play you’ve written?’

  ‘When Freddie was in television, years ago, he suggested I write one. He had visions of becoming a director himself.’

  ‘Why didn’t he?’

  ‘He’s really a newspaperman and found it frustrating to comment on pictures.’

  ‘What happened to your play?’

  ‘I never did anything with it.’

  ‘Why don’t you send it to someone who could give you a judgment?’

  ‘I doubt if I’ve even a copy.’

  ‘Is that why Freddie describes you as diffident?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  She gazed at him for several seconds. ‘My father was a fan of yours. When I was young he used to watch you play a lot.’

  She got out of the chair and crossed to the window.

  ‘I get so tired of this place at times. I lived for a while in London. I was more out of work than in it.’ The slender shoulders and the more slender waist, the jerseyed hips and the trousered thighs were silhouetted against the light from the window: her figure, standing there, half-darkened the room; after a moment he realised that, with a peculiar vehemence, she had begun to cry, not sharply, but with a curious self-possession. ‘I get so furious at times. There seems no hope for a woman.’

  ‘Times are changing,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Scarcely at all. One type of tyranny is replaced by another. Because we live in an age which has a primitivist view of man the inequalities go unnoticed.’

  Having written this down, without the slightest idea what he might do with it, Attercliffe stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She turned. ‘Half the people you meet don’t understand a fraction of the things you say, let alone the most minuscule portion of the things you feel.’

  ‘Tell me how you started,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘At school. Played Lady Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Morristown High: all girls. After that I went to college. Worked in London, then in television. Knew a chap who knew another. Appeared in a play. Auditioned for a film. Got the part. Am about to appear in another play. Have a series.’

  The irrelevance of this information caused her, finally, to glance in his direction.

  ‘Will it be a profile, or an interview?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘until I write it.’ She reminded him, he reflected, of his wife: despair might be a species of idleness but vanity was scarcely a prerequisite for unburdening yourself to someone who, even though he might be receptive, could do little if anything about it.

  ‘I’m not sure why you asked me to be interviewed,’ she said.

  ‘It was Freddie’s idea,’ he said.

  ‘Doing me a favour.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Makes a change from your usual line.’

  ‘Like you,’ he said, ‘I, too, am looking for something different.’

  ‘Involved with football all your life, you’re looking for something more expansive.’

  She laughed.

  ‘My natural instincts,’ she went on, ‘are to live from minute to minute. It’s why I don’t mind Dougie, for all the limitations of his friends, and why I ignore the scenery, keep my head down, and concentrate,’ she concluded, ‘on what I’m doing.’

  ‘I’ve been very much the same,’ Attercliffe said. ‘Circumstances don’t allow you,’ he continued, ‘to do much else.’

  ‘Will you stay in a place like this, or leave?’

  ‘I’ve five children,’ Attercliffe said. ‘The youngest only seven.’

  ‘The Vikings roamed the world for two-thirds of the year, and went back home for the winter.’

  ‘I assume that the Vikings,’ Attercliffe said, ‘cared less for the woman than the man. The impetus, in my case, has swung the other way.’

  She laughed.

  ‘She must have peculiar taste.’ She paused. ‘Choosing Maurice Pickersgill.’

  ‘None of us,’ he said, ‘shows a great deal of discernment when we choose the people we love.’

  ‘We’re controlled by forces,’ she suggested, ‘beyond our comprehension.’ Having crossed from the window to the fireplace, she leaned against the mantelshelf.

  ‘It may,’ Attercliffe said, ‘be the nature of the exercise.’

  She laughed again.

  ‘I’ve told you about my career. I’ve told you about my present plans. I’ve told you about my future. Is there anything else you need to know?’ she asked.

  ‘If I can’t write anything now,’ he
said, ‘I don’t believe I ever shall.’

  ‘Do you syndicate any of your material?’

  ‘To Australian newspapers.’

  ‘How about a national?’

  ‘It’s not allowed.’

  ‘You don’t have to work in this place for good.’

  ‘That’s what my wife has often said.’

  ‘If you’re free tomorrow come to a rehearsal. I have a call at two o’clock.’

  She took his pen and, in much the same manner as she had written her address, selected a clean page in his notebook and wrote another.

  ‘We’re in a church hall. I’ll talk to the director. Any publicity is welcome.’

  ‘What’s Heather’s views on your profession?’ he asked as, having handed back the notebook and the pen, she led the way to the door.

  ‘She’s more of an activist than I am. Dougie thinks her only aim is to put him down. She’s the sort of woman who feels she’s right and wants everyone to know it.’

  She came out to the landing, shook his hand, and added, ‘I hope you’ll come tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll leave two tickets at the theatre. We kick off seven o’clock on Thursday night.’

  When he reached the hall he heard the flat door close and, a moment later, when he reached the street, he saw her figure at the second-floor window where, waving, she drew down a blind.

  6

  ‘How do you mean you wouldn’t mind Sheila coming back?’

  ‘She has a right.’ Elise dug her heel at the carpet, her legs extended, her head thrust into the cushions which, purloined from the other chairs, she had laid in the easy chair behind. ‘I don’t see why women shouldn’t have a right.’

  Attercliffe had just returned from the City ground (frost-bitten fingers, frost-bitten toes: an air of hostility from the paranoid coach at having his latest moves observed), to find his eldest daughter sprawled on her back watching television in the living-room. Catherine, he gathered, from the rush of footsteps preceding the insertion of his key in the front door, had scampered upstairs to create the semblance, should he ascend, of someone engrossed in her homework: the position of the other easy chair and its one compressed cushion indicated where, only moments before, she must have been sitting. It was in this chair that Attercliffe sat and felt his daughter’s warmth rise into his frozen limbs.