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‘Who’s Alex?’ Attercliffe inquired again.

  ‘Alex,’ Elise said, ‘is a friend.’

  ‘A close friend?’

  ‘A friend. How much friendlier does he have to be?’

  A car went past in the road.

  ‘Which doesn’t resolve our argument,’ Attercliffe went on.

  ‘We’ll be going soon ourselves,’ his eldest daughter said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To university.’

  ‘Do you still intend to go?’

  ‘What else could we, as women, do?’

  ‘There are still three years before I go,’ Catherine said. ‘It affects me whether Mum comes or not. If she does, I can’t see it being very pleasant if Dad insists on staying.’

  Attercliffe got up and went out to the kitchen; he filled the kettle, plugged it in, got out a tea-bag, dropped it in a mug, and gazed out, past the garage and the wattle fence, past the lights of the other houses, past the dark enclosure of the field, to the silhouetted bulwark of the castle.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  Elise came in the door.

  ‘I’m wondering if, in refusing your mother permission to come back here, I’m acting in her and your best interests,’ Attercliffe said.

  She said, ‘You’re acting, surely, in your own.’

  ‘Despite your biological necessities, and economic tyrannies, I think it would be wrong for Sheila to come back. In the long run, it could only make her worse,’ he said.

  ‘How can she be worse when what she’s done only makes her better?’

  ‘Her coming here, under my domination, even if it’s only an economic one, isn’t going to do anything for her except take her back to where she was before. Far better,’ he went on, ‘to sell the house. The division, at least, will be more honest.’

  Looking past him, she smiled, shook her head, then said, ‘Cathy’s upset.’

  The kettle behind his back began to boil.

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ she added.

  He went back to the living-room.

  ‘Anything the matter?’ he asked, and when he saw his younger daughter sitting, crouched, her head buried in her hands, her slender shoulders shaking, he took his place beside her; it had been a long time since he had embraced either of his daughters – already, before their mother had left, they’d insisted that he shouldn’t – it was ‘out of date’, ‘self-conscious’ (not allowed) – and now, when he placed his arm around her, she rested her head against his chest. ‘Anything the matter?’

  ‘Everything,’ she cried.

  For a while there were no other sounds but the bellowing against his chest and of Elise preparing tea in the kitchen.

  ‘We’re always arguing,’ she added.

  ‘This is what families are like,’ he said.

  ‘Not all of them.’ Her head was stooped; all he could feel was the warmth of her brow against his chest, and the pressure of her hair beneath his chin.

  ‘We still love one another,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘When everybody is only out for what each of us can get?’

  ‘We’re not all out for that,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only hatred,’ she said, ‘that keeps us together.’

  ‘Hatred of what?’

  ‘You hate mother.’

  ‘All I want is the best for all of us,’ he said.

  ‘You hate Benjie.’

  ‘I don’t even know him.’

  ‘You hate Elise.’

  ‘What you call hatred is trying to find a proper course of action. Someone,’ he said, ‘has to look ahead.’

  ‘All it comes down to, Dad, is duty. You never live.’ She added, ‘Benjie and his family are all alive.’

  ‘Anybody can be alive if it costs them nothing,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘You don’t understand. You never have. The whole world,’ she continued, ‘is full of hate. Like Elise says: no one cares about anybody except themselves.’

  ‘That’s not what Elise was trying to say,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the point of anything? It all comes apart. And if it all comes apart, then all you are left with is selfishness.’

  ‘You care about other people,’ he said. ‘So does your mother. So does Elise. So do I, though as you say, I have very little chance to show it, except by worrying how you are.’

  ‘That’s selfishness in itself!’ she cried.

  Elise came in the door; she set a cup of tea by Attercliffe’s feet.

  ‘Anything I can get you?’ she asked.

  Attercliffe shook his head.

  ‘I’ll be upstairs.’

  The door closed; moments later came the sound of a record playing in her bedroom.

  ‘It all comes down to nothing, Dad.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘Mum’ll see there’s nothing left.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘She hates you. She says you’ve given her nothing.’ She paused. ‘You don’t even like the things I do.’

  ‘I don’t dislike,’ Attercliffe said, ‘all of them.’

  ‘Most of them.’

  ‘Most of them,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  All she wanted to do was cry.

  ‘Do you want your mother and me to come together?’

  ‘You’d only quarrel.’

  ‘You’re feeling disturbed,’ Attercliffe said, ‘at the thought of her coming back.’

  ‘She doesn’t care,’ she said. ‘All she can see is what she wants.’

  ‘I suppose you’re asking me,’ he said, ‘to reassure you I won’t be upset and won’t come to any harm, and that your mother coming, and my leaving, mean nothing to me in the long run.’

  ‘Why don’t you marry again?’

  ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘Mummy says you’re going to.’

  She drew her head up.

  ‘Do you fancy the idea of my getting married?’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  ‘Why can’t you give a straight answer?’

  ‘I’m trying,’ Attercliffe said, ‘to keep your mother out of it.’

  ‘Is that why she decided,’ she said, ‘to come back home?’

  ‘She’d decided to come back,’ he said, ‘before I mentioned it. She wants the whole of this house, as Elise suggests, and thinks I should leave it and start again.’

  He got out a handkerchief: she wiped her cheeks, frowned, handed the handkerchief back, and said, ‘Is there someone you’re in love with?’

  ‘I wanted your mother to be aware that I’m not as ancient as I feel at times.’

  The small teeth glimmered through the puckered lips: tears, having been removed, reappeared at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I don’t want Sheila to feel you’re something she can use, indefinitely, and to her advantage. Otherwise,’ he added, ‘I’ll end up like you.’

  The uneven teeth were revealed again.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about my getting married.’

  ‘I shan’t.’

  She wiped back her hair: thin wisps adhered to her cheeks and temples.

  ‘It’s not my experience that everyone is out for what they can get.’

  She shook her head, leaned away from the pressure of his arm, and slowly got up.

  Another car passed in the road outside.

  ‘Is there anything else I can tell you?’ he asked as she began to look amongst the unironed clothes.

  ‘No thanks.’ She shook her head.

  ‘You mustn’t allow Sheila to disturb you. There’s a mischievous side to her which she can’t control. When you see it showing itself you ought to point it out.’

  She turned, picked up a handkerchief, and went to the door.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve made a hash of it,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t feel badly done to,’ she said.

  The door was closed.

  He picked up his tea, now cold, and drank it.r />
  7

  The glass-panelled doors divided to reveal a dusty hall: metal-framed chairs and a wooden table were set across a parquet floor. A woman in blue overalls was sitting at the table; on the floor itself the movements of several figures were being co-ordinated by a man in corduroy trousers and a Fair Isle sweater – and wearing what, at first sight, looked like a sailor’s cap; only, as the doors closed behind Attercliffe’s back and the figures turned he discovered it was in reality a bandage: secured by a safety-pin above one ear, it swept across the man’s brow to cover one eye.

  The woman in overalls got up and, taking a pencil from her mouth, crossed to where Attercliffe was standing and asked, ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  ‘I was invited by Phyllis Gardner,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Oh, Phyl.’ Scarcely older than Elise, she added, ‘Her call’s been put off until tomorrow.’

  ‘What is it, Meg?’ the figure with the bandaged eye called out.

  ‘Someone looking for Phyl.’

  ‘Phyl’s not here.’ The figure smiled, the one eye still turned in Attercliffe’s direction. ‘You’re not the chap she was on about?’ and, turning, before Attercliffe could answer, he called, ‘Back to your positions,’ glancing at the figures behind him, extending his hand, coming forward, still glancing behind him, and adding, ‘Your previous positions. The present ones we haven’t worked out.’

  A soft, square-shaped hand clasped Attercliffe’s and the man announced, ‘I’m Harry Towers. Sit in and watch,’ nodding to the girl who returned to the table, and calling, ‘Get them into their positions, Meg.’

  Taking Attercliffe’s arm, he directed him to a chair beside the table, and added, ‘This is Megan, my assistant,’ and as a second, even younger figure – also dressed in overalls – approached and handed him a plastic cup, continued, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? Have mine. Jenny here can get another.’ The younger overalled figure moved off: a coffee-dispensing machine stood on a counter in an alcove at the side of the windowless hall. ‘We’re underground. It tends to get claustrophobic by the end of the day.’ The face, like the hand, was large and soft, with the single eye, reddened around the pupil, enclosed within an envelope of bluish skin which, at the inception of a smile, obscured the eye itself completely: the nose was round and fleshy, the lips full, the mouth narrow, the chin subtended in sheaths of fat. ‘Just take it in. Ask any questions. We’re near the end of rehearsals but, apart from my saying so, I’m sure you couldn’t tell.’

  He stepped on to the floor beyond the table; the parquet was marked out with coloured tape: the actors, four of them, took up their positions. A speech began; action followed: the girl sitting at the table called out a line.

  The doors behind Attercliffe had opened; he heard a wordless exclamation, and the jacketed figure of Phyllis Gardner touched his hand, sat beside him and, indicating the coffee, said, ‘I called your office and left a message. I thought I’d come down in case you hadn’t heard.’

  She acknowledged three of the actors, who waved, then Towers turned, caressed his bandage, and called, ‘We can use you next. The calls, at the present, are all to cock.’

  ‘This is the scene,’ she said to Attercliffe, ‘before the end. The penultimate,’ she concluded, ‘before the climax.’

  They sat in silence as the scene progressed, her presence marked, finally, by the sharp intake of her breath as, reaching over to the table, she removed a script, opened it, whispered, ‘I didn’t bring mine. Do you mind if I mark it?’ – whispering, once again, inaudibly, beneath her breath, her voice a steady murmur.

  The bandaged head took on a hallucinatory significance in the artificially-illuminated room: the pneumatic-looking figure, its trousers crumpled, a line of skin visible below its sweater, moved around the dusty floor with a minimum of effort and a maximum display of facial expression – reinforced, rather than dissipated, by the presence of the bandage. Someone laughed: a line was repeated, retracted, then tried again.

  ‘You didn’t get the message?’

  Attercliffe shook his head.

  ‘Just as well.’ The almond-fashioned eyes, without their usual make-up, were outlined in black: her face was fuller, less mature, the eyes wider, less abstracted. ‘Have you made much progress?’

  ‘I’ve made a start.’

  ‘Quiet, please,’ the pneumatic-looking figure called and the repetition of lines began again.

  ‘I’ll go and get some coffee.’

  She got up from the chair, crossed to the alcove, filled a plastic cup at the urn and, finally, on tip-toe, returned.

  She was wearing, beneath her jacket, a tweed skirt and flat-heeled shoes, and, seeing her from a distance, he recognised, with the diminution of her height, a childlike quality not only in her build but in her expression.

  She mouthed a word which, with a gesture – shifting the plastic cup from hand to hand – indicated, ‘Hot,’ and sat beside him once again.

  The actors repeated their moves; the voices echoed: feet shuffled. Phyllis, mouthing words, turned her script with a swift, clipping rasp of the paper.

  ‘It’s purgatory,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll never learn it.’

  Towers, having returned to the table, reapproached the group across the room: he manœuvred a figure beside him, beckoned another, moved a third, called out a line, gestured, and, indicating to one of the actors to imitate his actions, came back to the table.

  In the street a lorry thundered past; glass rattled in the doors.

  ‘It’s very boring, if you’re not involved. All those tapes,’ she indicated the floor, ‘mark the set. That one over there’s a door.’

  ‘Phyl, you must stop talking.’ The director avoided looking in Attercliffe’s direction, and added, ‘We can’t concentrate with all this chatter.’

  He clapped his hands; the figures returned to their several positions: the girl at the table called out a line.

  ‘Like being back at school.’ She returned to her script, murmuring beneath her breath.

  Attercliffe leaned forward, his elbows on his knees: it was, he reflected, like watching players rehearse a move, perfecting it by repetition; he regarded the delicately-fingered hand clasping the script beside him and noticed how the paper trembled.

  ‘If you move to your right and allow him to come in front of you.’ A whitely-lit face was turned in Attercliffe’s direction, the diagonal bandage across one eye, a script held out before it. ‘Then, after crossing, move to your left, and you’ll find you’re in a position to take your cue.’

  She whispered, ‘This is where they’re waiting for the brother, who is in his early twenties, to bring home his fiancée, who has two children as old as he is.’ She laughed, watching Attercliffe’s expression. ‘His father is indisposed towards him, his mother is apprehensive, his three sisters varyingly unsympathetic. I’m upstairs at the moment, powdering my nose.’

  For a while only the murmur of the voices came from across the room, together with the flicking of the pages as Phyllis, with her unpainted nails, stabbed at the lines she’d scored with a pencil.

  ‘It all takes place on a farm.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We’ll take a break, Meg.’ The white-bandaged figure dropped his script, rubbed his hands together, blew into them, called, ‘Cold!’ and came across, smiling at Phyllis whom, rising, he greeted with a kiss. Turning to Attercliffe, he asked, ‘Get anything out of it?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘All fresh! All original! All inspiring! As it is,’ the eye moved to Phyllis then back to Attercliffe, ‘all stale, and familiar, and lacking in spontaneity. Though that,’ he added, ‘we are looking to Miss Gardner to provide.’

  ‘Too late, dear,’ Phyllis said, at which, for the first time, the director laughed.

  ‘Not now we have an audience,’ he said.

  ‘A privilege,’ she said, ‘at this stage, not vouchsafed to many.’

  ‘None at all,’ Towers said, ‘to be precise. A
ny publicity,’ he went on, ‘is welcome.’

  ‘Frank,’ Phyllis said, ‘is looking for a subject along altogether less traditional lines.’

  The single red eye, with its dark iris, examined Attercliffe intently.

  ‘Something more personal.’

  ‘You’re not interested in this,’ the director inquired, ‘for its own sake?’ He gestured round. ‘Have you something we can use ourselves? The play,’ he added, ‘has been done in London and we are repeating it at something less than secondhand.’

  He took Attercliffe’s arm and indicated they might go outside.

  Breathing deeply – gasping – his stocky figure silhouetted against the sky, he led the way up a flight of steps; then, once in the yard, which occupied a derelict graveyard at the side of a recently-constructed church, he paused, examined a line of cars parked immediately inside the entrance – tried the handle of one and looked inside – called, ‘Locked, but they broke in the other day and stole a transistor,’ and, gesturing at the town – at its configuration visible across the street – inquired, ‘Is writing for a newspaper, for instance, a great deal different from composing dialogue?’

  His hands in his pockets, he walked slowly up and down.

  ‘The novel in this country is virtually finished. Not like the American novel. Here society’s too diffuse, lacking in energy. Drama, on the other hand, is transcendental. It’s not restricted by social convention. You can chance your arm!’

  His path had worn a track through the ashes: his shoes were in holes, his jersey stained, his trousers torn: disconcertingly, he reminded Attercliffe of Fredericks.

  ‘Phyl is very much taken by you. Sees you as someone who struck it rich, then found the going tougher later on.’ He glanced across. ‘I saw you play.’

  Attercliffe didn’t answer.

  ‘Years ago.’ He gestured, once more, in the direction of the town. ‘I was a young enthusiast in those days. Not for football, necessarily, but for anything I thought expressive.’ His feet rasped in the ashes once again. ‘The discipline required to live in a place like this is so constricting that even reaction to it acquires a predictability of its own. I heard about your play.’

  He glanced across the street: his one eye examined the passing traffic, then the buildings opposite, and, finally, the distant spire.