Second fiddle, p.9
Second Fiddle, page 9
Neither woman spoke as they transferred the boxes of junk from the boot of Margaret’s car to Laura’s. Then Laura asked, ‘Does Claud want you to leave the neighbourhood? Does he know you are going?’
‘There is not room for both of us,’ said Margaret.
‘You do not mean you and Claud, do you? You mean you and me.’
Margaret smiled.
‘I shall find out about that girl,’ said Laura, getting into her car.
‘Oh, that.’ Margaret’s smile broadened. ‘She was just the beginning of the rapids.’
Laura started the engine, reached for her safety belt. ‘I am not at all a maternal sort of friend,’ she said.
‘Who wants a maternal friend?’ asked Margaret falsely.
‘Claud? Perhaps Claud does.’
‘He’s not likely to find one, is he?’ Margaret watched Laura go. I wonder what she’s after, she thought. Then, turning back into the house, she thought, I can’t help him. If I stayed on here, I wouldn’t be of the slightest use to him, while Laura will believe in him, give him the courage to write his novel. The trouble with me, she thought honestly, is that I simply cannot believe in this wretched novel, I can’t imagine Claud as a writer.
Standing at the sink, rinsing the mugs she and Laura had used, Margaret experienced the feeling of desolation that had assailed her on Claud’s first day at school; there seemed little difference between Claud aged five and Claud aged twenty-three. His mix of boldness and timidity was unchanged. At five he had kicked her shins when thwarted, screamed for help if injured, twisted away from her. He had also come running for help and reassurance in time of trouble (he did not do that any more). He had expected her to be there if needed. I always was there, she thought as she dried the mugs and hung them on the dresser.
What am I worrying about? He’s a grown man. She unhooked the mug Laura had used. Was there still sugar on the bottom? She rinsed the mug a second time.
Was that lipstick? She looked closely at the mug. She doesn’t use lipstick, her mouth is naturally red. Will she and Claud—? Margaret stood holding the mug. I despise possessive mothers, she thought. If Laura should want him and he should want her?
There’s nothing I can do, she thought. She shrugged her shoulders and replaced the mug on its hook.
Sly of her to find that packet of photos—It never occurred to me to look for—I defended him, didn’t I? I stood up for his independence. Am I jealous? Of Laura? Why did Claud never talk to me about Amy, whoever she is? He never brought her home, Margaret thought resentfully. What am I fussing about? Until Laura came by I was planning to sell up and make my getaway.
Getaway, she thought, there’s a word. Then she thought, Laura guessed it all, she understands what I am doing, that it’s best for—
This train of thought was interrupted by the sound of Laura returning. Margaret went to the door; Laura leaned from the driver’s seat. ‘On second thoughts, Margaret, I don’t really want that chest, is that all right?’
‘Yes, of course. Thank you. Don’t worry.’ What am I thanking her for? ‘Thanks,’ she repeated. Laura drove away waving.
Closing the door Margaret smiled grimly. ‘I am doing what is best for me,’ she said out loud, ‘as I intended before she interrupted me.’ I am not letting Claud down, she told herself; I shall be on the telephone, should he want me.
Margaret snatched up the mug Laura had used and smashed it onto the floor, where it broke. Then, slightly shamefaced, she fetched a dustpan and brush and swept up the pieces and tipped them into the dustbin. Washing her hands under the tap, she found herself feeling grateful to Laura for inspiring this small rush of adrenalin.
Laura eased up the trap-door and moved a step higher up the ladder. From this position she could see Claud sitting stooped at the table, one hand clutching a piece of crushed typing paper, the other on his knee, fingers drumming. He did not notice her. He stared up through the attic window. She knew that all he could see from there was the sky, perhaps a gull wheeling past or a rapid flight of starlings; if he wished for a more interesting view, he would have to stand up (or look at me, she thought).
Claud dropped the crushed paper onto the floor, straightened his back, put a fresh sheet of paper in the machine and began to tap; she was interested to see that he appeared confident and resolute. She kept quiet while he chuntered along to the end of a paragraph, stopped, leaned forward to read what he had written, hissed through his teeth and resumed typing. The paper finished, he released it from the machine and, laying it on a pile of manuscript, inserted a fresh sheet and carried on. He kept this up for three more pages before coming to a halt. Then he whistled a shrill note of satisfaction and stood up, rubbing his hands together. As he pushed his chair back he caught sight of her head poking up through the trap-door level with the floor. He stared. Laura did not move.
‘You look like someone in a Beckett play,’ he said.
Laura smiled.
He thought perhaps her eyes were so bright because of the bluish tint of the whites, that he was pleased to see her, that he liked her pointed nose and the way her hair sprang back from her forehead. He thought she looked strange and exciting, that he was pleased, glad, he liked the way she was there not speaking.
He crossed the loft to the trap-door, knelt, then lay, his face on a level with hers. He said, ‘I thought you had disappeared for good.’
‘You did?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘London.’
‘With that musician, the chap I saw you with at the concert? Is he your lover?’
‘No.’ (Not any more.)
‘Ah.’
‘Ah.’
‘I have been thinking of you so much.’ (That isn’t true, but I should have been thinking of her, my word yes, I certainly should.) ‘Missing you,’ he said. Of course he’d missed her.
‘And you? How goes the book? It’s new, isn’t it? You scrapped the two paras and sixteen sentences?’
‘How did you guess? They were rubbish.’
‘So this is about?’
Claud told her the schema, the character who might be his mother, her peculiar relationship with household machinery, lying on the floor propped on his elbows, his face level with hers. Her hair smelled exciting. It smelled of pepper. ‘Shall you come up?’ he asked.
‘If you insist. I am quite comfortable here standing on the ladder, getting a mouse’s eye view of your loft.’
‘It is your loft. I am only here on sufferance.’
‘Oh, no.’ She stepped up the ladder. There had been a warm flow of air from the house below fanning up her skirt; she was reluctant to leave it for the austerity of the loft. ‘Oh, you have a stove. What luxury.’ She strolled about looking at Claud’s things, his clothes hanging limp on nails, his books, the bed which had been hers many years ago. She looked out of the window and was reassured by the unchanged view; she touched the table, let a finger rest for a second on the manuscript, sat down on the bed. ‘And who else? Who else is in your book?’
‘Oh—I—er—’
‘Well?’ She was sharp.
Claud answered with a rush of words spewed out, speeded by emotion. ‘There’s a girl, she bloody intrudes, she’s not supposed to be in it but she keeps bobbing up and I do-not-want-her.’
‘Someone you were—or are—in love with?’ Laura spoke lightly, looking away from him, giving him the chance to rat on the bitch. (In what way had she hurt him?)
‘Well,’ said Claud, off-hand, ‘you know how it is, adolescent love, first love I suppose, the usual sort of nonsense. She recurs, that’s all, a sort of emotional burp.’
‘Much in love? It was heavy?’
‘Oh God, yes, but I wouldn’t give her a second thought now. She doesn’t fit the scenario, that’s what is so aggravating.’
‘Sit here.’ Laura patted the bed beside her.
‘I mean,’ said Claud, obeying, ‘she played a small and unimportant role in my life, it was quite brief.’ He spoke protestingly, wishing Amy had been small, unimportant.
‘Brevity is neither here nor there. She is obviously someone who needs exorcising. What did she do to you?’ Laura probed like a dentist at a raw nerve and leaned against Claud beside her on the bed.
He liked the way she smelled of pepper. He put his arm around her. ‘You smell so—’
‘So what?’
‘Different.’
‘From what?’
‘Other people.’
‘We all smell different. Now tell me about this intruding girl. What was her name?’
‘I’d rather not. She was called Amy.’
‘Shall we take our clothes off and get into bed?’
‘Take our clothes off?’ Claud sat up straight.
‘Yes.’
‘Undress?’ His voice rose in panic.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s nearly lunch time.’
‘I shall treat you as an hors d’oeuvre.’
Claud sprang off the bed, undressed, tearing off his clothes, his back modestly turned, his heart thumping in a mix of alarm and excitement. When he turned round Laura was in the bed between the sheets still wearing her sweater.
‘You cheated.’ He scrambled in beside her. His legs felt weak.
‘Only my top half—’
‘Oh.’ She was right; below the waist she had no clothes on. ‘Oh,’ he muttered, ‘Oh my G—’
‘What was she like, this girl Amy?’ asked Laura an hour later, when they had had a refreshing and recuperative nap.
Claud came down from cloud nine. ‘Must you bring her up, the stupid bitch?’
‘What did she do to you?’ (The dentist’s drill.)
Claud shouted: ‘She would not take her Walkman off when we made love.’
Laura did not laugh. ‘I can see that that was serious,’ she said. (I’ve got the tooth out. God, how it must hurt.)
‘You can?’
‘Wounding.’
‘It was.’
‘Did she perform in time to the music?’ (Just a little dab of antiseptic.)
‘How would I know?’
‘So you threw her out?’
‘She threw me. It was her flat.’
‘Worse.’
‘Thanks for not laughing. I took a risk telling you.’
‘You know, I think she fits in the novel. Your mother’s machines, a Walkman, quite a small part of course.’ (Now rinse and spit.)
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Okay, I’ll let her in. I think you are right.’
‘Good.’ (Rinse just once more and spit again. In no time you will think you thought of this yourself.) The afternoon sun made a pool of light on the floor. Seagulls shrieked across the roofs, lorries passed grumbling up the street. ‘Long ago,’ said Laura, ‘when I was young, I got stinking drunk at a party. In the morning when I woke I realised that someone had shared my bed.’
‘He’d raped you?’
‘I don’t think it was rape.’
‘Who was it?’ Claud felt his throat constrict.
‘There was this smell of hair oil on my pillow, nothing else.’
‘Hair oil?’
‘People used hair oil in those days, dumbo.’
‘Of course.’ He remembered his father using some sharp-smelling mix of oil and spirit. ‘So?’
‘So ever since I hope to recognise it on some stranger I may be introduced to.’
‘But people don’t use hair oil any more.’
‘They don’t, do they.’
‘Did you make this up to make me feel comfortable after telling you about Amy?’ Claud was suspicious.
‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
But watching Laura dress Claud thought that’s just what she would do.
‘Come on,’ said Laura, ‘I’m starving. Let’s get ourselves lunch, it’s not too late.’
As he followed her down the ladder Claud felt a rush of gratitude. She had not embarrassed him by asking to read his manuscript. She had not mocked. He felt assuaged, relaxed, masculine and bouncy, positively confident. When she suggested lunching at the wine bar, he agreed. It would be nice, it would round off a successful morning to have Mavis unwrapped from her awful overcoat stand pliant by their table to take their order. ‘Would it bore you to read my manuscript?’ he asked with a generosity which he instantly regretted.
They were walking up the street leaning into a draughty wind. Laura did not answer immediately. She was thinking that it was one thing to possess Claud’s body, there was much good work she could do there, but was she prepared to take on his mind? ‘I would not be bored,’ she said carefully, ‘but wary. It’s a big responsibility.’
Claud felt downcast; he wished he could retract his offer. It was not an offer he would have made to Mavis, for instance, or his mother or Amy, if they had still been on speaking terms. My work is private, he thought, his mind running already on a line roughly parallel to Laura’s.
‘I should be flattered,’ said Laura, ‘but think it over.’
‘How civilised you are,’ exclaimed Claud, relieved and ebullient. He pushed open the door of the wine bar. ‘What shall we eat? Come on, let’s sit here where we sat before. Let’s harass Mavis.’
But Mavis was not there. Her place had been taken by a gangling youth wearing a white apron stretching down to his feet, who looked at Claud with contempt. ‘Didn’t you know,’ he said, as he looked forward to telling them that everything was off except yesterday’s quiche, ‘didn’t you know that Mavis has got a part in a London show? She got a phone call last night and went off at the speed of light, borrowed the rail fare and hopped it. Right, then. You want to eat? Everything’s off except the quiche. Might be able to rustle up some salad.’
‘No matter,’ said Laura, opening her bag and extracting her purse. ‘Just take off that silly apron and streak down to the fishmonger’s like a good boy, and bring back two dozen oysters. We will eat them with lots of brown bread and butter. Bring half a pound of prawns, too.’
‘Nobody here can open oysters,’ said the boy mutinously.
‘But I can,’ said Laura. ‘Now scoot.’
‘You bloody Thornbys,’ said the boy, taking the money. ‘Bloody, bloody people.’
‘And bring an oyster knife and a lemon,’ Laura called after him.
Mavis had arrived early for the train. The wind penetrated her thick coat as she waited for the signal to turn green. She had been foolish to leave home so soon; but she had been consumed by train fever, crazy to be on her way in the Inter-City train which would take her to London where some day, not immediately of course, her name would be up outside a theatre in electric glory.
Terrence had wanted to see her off—he was taking her place in the wine bar—but she had told him to be sure to get to work on time. ‘Make yourself indispensable,’ she had said. He would be there now, she thought pityingly, wearing the apron he had stolen for a joke from a cafe on the school trip to France the year before last.
Her mother had said: ‘Why don’t you ask Claud to see you off? He’s only up there typing.’ Poor old Mum would not understand that part of this joyous departure would be Claud’s surprise when he heard that she had gone to work at her true vocation instead of eating her heart out taking orders from all those boring, barely literate vegetable growers, dull provincials who didn’t know, wouldn’t accept, that she was an actress. Had not Laura pointed her out to Claud in that joking way of hers which put one down? ‘You wouldn’t believe Mavis was an actress.’ Something like that.
‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ hummed Mavis, pacing the platform, seventy paces to the end, seventy paces back. I have got it all together, she thought with satisfaction. And Claud, how surprised would he be? She had not told him. Nor had she told anyone, least of all her mother, the world’s greatest blabbermouth in Mavis’ opinion, that the part she had so joyfully accepted was that of understudy. Understudy to an extremely healthy little actress often boringly described by the agent they shared as ‘a great little trouper’.
Mavis turned away from the wind. People were beginning to trickle onto the platform. Not too long now for the off.
I shan’t get paid much, she thought, lucky I’ve saved. Pity I’m not a man, they sell their sperm to make ends meet—a curious piece of information from Terrence who had learned it from a programme on TV. He had added nastily, ‘Doesn’t seem fair, does it, that girls have to prostitute,’ using prostitute as a verb; he had always sat among the ‘could-do-betters’ at school.
Of course one had done jobs for Laura while at drama school, that was not prostitution. I am a virgin and wish to stay that way, Mavis chuckled, remembering Claud fumbling up from the waistband of her jeans, his hand trapped between vest and tee-shirt. ‘And a virgin I will be,’ Mavis hummed. Ah! The signal had turned green, cling cling went the telegraph. She could hear the train shriek on the far side of the hill as it plunged from the cutting into the hillside. If that’s not sexual, I don’t know what is, thought Mavis who, while avoiding personal experience, had read a lot of books. As she snatched up her bags in readiness for the train she felt a surge of excitement as sharp as sex. I shall not be an understudy for ever. She heaved her bags onto the rack. I am not mislaying my virginity. Oh no! she vowed as she settled into a corner seat, not if that’s what it leads to, she thought, as her ears reacted to the screams of an infant across the aisle. Oh Jesus, no! she thought as the infant’s sibling lost its footing and fell flat, its precarious balance faulted by the train jerking into motion. Claud is not all that attractive, she thought. All that can wait, what cannot wait is my career.
Mavis took cotton wool from her bag and stuffed bits into her ears, a practice she had learned when doing prep while her mother watched soaps on television. Settling in her seat, she stared out of the train window but she did not see the scenery flash by. She only saw herself and her future.
Claud watched Laura open the oysters; at any minute he expected the lethal knife to slip and her bright blood gush. Would it look like ketchup or blood orange juice as it dripped over the oysters? He had once watched a large red moon rise from a backdrop of oystershell cloud. ‘Do be careful,’ he said, appalled by the risks she was taking. The moonrise had presaged a violent storm.
