It is in the park that I see Florence for the first time since our ‘holiday’. She seems to flash past me, as she flashed past the window in the train, nine years ago. For a moment I consider letting her fall back into my memory, but I am too curious for that. ‘Florence! Florence!’ I call, again, until she turns.
She tells me she has been thinking of me and expecting us to meet, after seeing one of my films on television.
‘I have followed your career, Rob,’ she says, as we look one another over.
She calls her son and he stands with her; she takes his hand. She and Archie have bought a house on the other side of the park.
‘I even came to the plays. I know it’s not possible, but I wondered if you ever glimpsed me, from the stage.’
‘No. But I did wonder if you took an interest.’
‘How could I not?’
I laugh and ask, ‘How am I?’
‘Better, now you do less. You probably know – you don’t mind me telling you this?’
I shake my head. ‘You know me,’ I say.
‘You were an intense actor. You left yourself nowhere to go. I like you still.’ She hesitates. ‘Stiller, I mean.’
She looks the same but as if a layer of healthy fat has been scraped from her face, revealing the stitching beneath. There is even less of her; she seems a little frail, or fragile. She has always been delicate, but now she moves cautiously.
As we talk I recollect having let her down, but am unable to recall the details. She was active in my mind for the months after our ‘holiday’, but I found the memory to be less tenacious after relating the story to a friend as a tale of a young man’s foolishness and misfortune. When he laughed I forgot – there is nothing as forgiving as a joke.
However, I have often wished for Florence’s advice and support, particularly when the press took a fascinated interest in me, and started to write untrue stories. In the past few years I have played good parts and been praised and well paid. However, my sense of myself has not caught up with the alteration. I have been keeping myself down, and pushing happiness away. ‘Success hasn’t changed you,’ people tell me, as if it were a compliment.
When we say goodbye, Florence tells me when she will next be in the park. ‘Please come,’ she says. At home I write down the time and date, pushing the note under a pile of papers.
She and I are wary with one another, and make only tentative and polite conversation; however, I enjoy sitting beside her on a bench in the sun, outside the teahouse, while her eight-year-old plays football. He is a hurt, suspicious boy with hair down to his shoulders, which he refuses to have cut. He likes to fight with bigger children and she does not know what to do with him. Without him, perhaps, she would have got away.
At the moment I have few friends and welcome her company. The phone rings constantly but I rarely go out and never invite anyone round, having become almost phobic where other people are concerned. What I imagine about others I cannot say, but the human mind is rarely clear in its sight. Perhaps I feel depleted, having just played the lead in a film.
During the day I record radio plays and audio books. I like learning to use my voice as an instrument. Probably I spend too much time alone, thinking I can give myself everything. My doctor, with whom I drink, is fatuously keen on pills and cheerfulness. He says if I cannot be happy with what I have, I never will be. He would deny the useful facts of human conflict, and wants me to take antidepressants, as if I would rather be paralysed than know my terrible selves.
Having wondered for months why I was waking up every morning feeling sad, I have started therapy. I am aware, partly from my relationship with Florence, that that which cannot be said is the most dangerous concealment. I am only beginning to understand psychoanalytic theory, yet am inspired by the idea that we do not live on a fine point of consciousness but exist in all areas of our being simultaneously, particularly the dreaming. Until I started lying down in Dr Wallace’s room, I had never had such extended conversations about the deepest personal matters. To myself I call analysis – two people talking – ‘the apogee of civilisation’. Lying in bed I have begun to go over my affair with Florence. These are more like waking dreams – Coleridge’s ‘flights of lawless speculation’ – than considered reflections, as if I am setting myself a subject for the night. Everything returns at this thoughtful age, particularly childhood.
One afternoon in the autumn, after we have met four or five times, it is wet, and Florence and I sit at a table inside the damp teahouse. The only other customers are an elderly couple. Florence’s son sits on the floor drawing.
‘Can’t we get a beer?’ Florence says.
‘They don’t sell it here.’
‘What a damned country.’
‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’
She says, ‘Can you be bothered?’
‘Nope.’
Earlier I notice the smell of alcohol on her. It is a retreat I recognise; I have started to drink with more purpose myself.
While I am at the counter fetching the tea, I see Florence holding the menu at arm’s length; then she brings it closer to her face and moves it away again, seeking the range at which it will be readable. Earlier I noticed a spectacle case in the top of her bag, but had not realised they were reading glasses.
When I sit down, Florence says, ‘Last night Archie and I went to see your new film. It was discomfiting to sit there looking at you with him.’
‘Did Archie remember me?’
‘At the end I asked him. He remembered the weekend. He said you had more substance to you than most actors. You helped him.’
‘I hope not.’
‘I don’t know what you two talked about that night, but a few months after your conversation Archie left his job and went into publishing. He accepted a salary cut, but he was determined to find work that didn’t depress him. Oddly, he turned out to be very good at it. He’s doing well. Like you.’
‘Me? But that is only because of you.’ I want to give her credit for teaching me something about self-belief and self-determination. ‘Without you I wouldn’t have got off to a good start …’
My thanks make her uncomfortable, as if I am reminding her of a capacity she does not want to know she is wasting.
‘But it’s your advice I want,’ she says anxiously. ‘Be straight, as I was with you. Do you think I can return to acting?’
‘Are you seriously considering it?’
‘It’s the only thing I want for myself.’
‘Florence, I read with you years ago but I have never seen you on stage. That aside, the theatre is not a profession you can return to at will.’
‘I’ve started sending my photograph around,’ she continues. ‘I want to play the great parts, the women in Chekhov and Ibsen. I want to howl and rage with passion and fury. Is that funny? Rob, tell me if I’m being a fool. Archie considers it a middle-aged madness.’
‘I am all for that,’ I say.
As we part she touches my arm and says, ‘Rob, I saw you the other day. I don’t think you saw me, or did you?’
‘But I would have spoken.’
‘You were shopping in the deli. Was that your wife? The blonde girl –’
‘It was someone else. She has a room nearby.’
‘And you –’
‘Florence –’
‘I don’t want to pry,’ she says. ‘But you used to put your hand on my back, to guide me, like that, through crowds …’
I do not like being recognised with the girl for fear of it getting in the papers and back to my wife. But I resent having to live a secret life. I am confused.
‘I was jealous,’ she says.
‘Were you? But why?’
‘I had started to hope … that it wasn’t too late for you and me. I think I care for you more than I do for anybody. That is rare, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve never understood you,’ I say, irritably. ‘Why would you marry Archie … and then start seeing me?’
It is a question I have never been able to put, fearing she will think I am being critical of her, or that I will have to hear an account of their ultimate compatibility.
She says, ‘I hate to admit it, but I imagined in some superstitious way that marriage would solve my problems and make me feel secure.’ When I laugh she looks at me hard. ‘This raises a question that we both have to ask.’
‘What is that?’
She glances at her son and says softly, ‘Why do you and I go with people who won’t give us enough?’
I say nothing for a time. Then follows the joke which is not a joke, but which makes us laugh freely for the first time since we met again. I have been reading an account by a contemporary author of his break up with his partner. It is relentless, and, probably because it rings true, has been taken exception to. Playfully I tell Florence that surely divorce is an underestimated pleasure. People speak of the violence of separation, but what of the delight? What could be more refreshing than never having to sleep in the same bed as that rebarbative body, and hear those familiar complaints? Such a moment of deliverance would be one to hug to yourself for ever, like losing one’s virginity, or becoming a millionaire.
I stand at the door of the teahouse to watch her walk back across the park, under the trees; she carries a white umbrella, treading so lightly she barely disturbs the rain drops on the grass, her son running ahead of her. I am certain I can hear laughter hanging in the air like an ethereal jinn.
The next time I see her she comes at me quickly, kissing me on both cheeks and saying she wants to tell me something.
We take the kids to a pub with a garden. I have started to like her shaven-headed boy, Ben, having at first not known how to speak to him. ‘Like a human being,’ I decide, is the best method. We put my son on a coat on the ground and he bustles about on his hands and bandy legs, nose down, arse sticking out. Ben chases him and hides; the baby’s laugh makes us all laugh. Others’ pleasure in him increases mine. It has taken a while, but I am getting used to serving and enjoying him, rather than seeing what I want as the important thing.
‘Rob, I’ve got a job,’ she says. ‘I wrote to them and went in and auditioned. It’s a pub theatre, a basement smelling of beer and damp. There’s no money, only a cut of the box office. But it’s good work. It is great work!’
She is playing the mother in The Glass Menagerie. By coincidence, the pub is at the end of my street. I tell her I am delighted.
‘You will come and see me, won’t you?’
‘But yes.’
‘I often wonder if you’re still upset about that holiday.’
We have never discussed it, but now she is in the mood.
‘I’ve thought about it a thousand times. I wish Archie hadn’t come.’
I laugh. It is too late; how could it matter now? ‘I mean, I wish I hadn’t brought him. Sitting in that stationary train with you scowling was the worst moment of my life. But I had thought I was going mad. I had been looking forward to the holiday. The night before we were to leave, Archie asked again if I wanted him to come. He could feel how troubled I was. As I packed I realised that if we went away together my marriage would shatter. You were about to go to America. Your film would make you successful. Women would want you. I knew you didn’t really want me.’
This is hard. But I understand that Archie is too self-absorbed to be disturbed by her. He asks for and takes everything. He does not see her as a problem he has to solve, as I do. She has done the sensible thing, finding a man she cannot make mad.
She goes on, ‘I required Archie’s strength and security more than passion – or love. That was love, to me. He asked, too, if I were having an affair.’
‘To prove that you weren’t, you invited him to come.’
She puts her hand on my arm. ‘I’ll do anything now. Say the word.’
I cannot think of anything I want her to do.
For a few weeks I do not see her. We are both rehearsing. One Saturday, my wife Helen is pushing the kid in a trolley in the supermarket as I wander about with a basket. Florence comes round a corner and we begin talking at once. She is enjoying the rehearsals. The director does not push her far enough – ‘Rob, I can do much morel’ – but he will not be with her on stage, where she feels ‘queenlike’. ‘Anyhow, we’ve become friends,’ she says meaningfully.
Archie does not like her acting; he does not want strangers looking at her, but he is wise enough to let her follow her wishes. She has got an agent; she is seeking more work. She believes she will make it.
After our spouses have packed away their groceries, Archie comes over and we are introduced again. He is large; his hair sticks out, his face is ruddy and his eyebrows look like a patch of corn from which a heavy creature has recently risen. Helen looks across suspiciously. Florence and I are standing close to one another; perhaps one of us is touching the other.
At home I go into my room, hoping Helen will not knock. I suspect she won’t ask me who Florence is. She will want to know so much that she won’t want to find out.
Without having seen the production, I rouse myself to invite several people from the film and theatre world to see Florence’s play. Drinking in the pub beforehand, I can see that to the director’s surprise the theatre will be full; he is wondering where all these smart people in deluxe loafers have come from, scattered amongst the customary drinkers with their elbows on the beer-splashed bar, watching football on television with their heads craned up, as if looking for an astronomical wonder. I become apprehensive myself, questioning my confidence in Florence and wondering how much of it is gratitude for her encouragement of me. Even if I have put away my judgement, what does it matter? I seem to have known her for so long that she is not to be evaluated or criticised but is just a fact of my life. The last time we met in the teahouse she told me that eighteen months ago she had a benign lump removed from behind her ear. The fear that it will return has given her a new fervency.
The bell rings. We go through a door marked ‘Theatre and Toilets’ and gropingly make our way down the steep, worn stairs into a cellar, converted into a small theatre. The programme is a single sheet, handed to us by the director as we go in. The room smells musty, and despite the dark the place is shoddy; there is a pillar in front of me I could rest my cheek on. Outside I hear car alarms, and from upstairs the sound of cheering men. But in this small room the silence is charged by concentration and the hope of some home-made magnificence. For the first time in years I am reminded of the purity and intensity of the theatre.
When I get out at the interval I notice Archie pulling himself up the stairs behind me. At the top, panting, he takes my arm to steady himself. I buy a drink, and, in order to be alone, go and stand outside the pub. I am afraid that if my friends, the ‘important’ people, remain after the interval it is because I would disapprove if they left; and if they praise Florence to me, it is only because they would have guessed the ulterior connection. The depth and passion Florence has on stage is clear to me. But I know that what an artist finds interesting about their own work, the part they consider original and penetrating, will not necessarily compel an audience, who might not even notice it, but only attend to the story.
Archie’s head pokes around the pub door. His eyes find me and he comes out. I notice he has his son, Ben, with him.
‘Hallo, Rob, where’s Matt?’ says Ben.
‘Mart’s my son,’ I explain to Archie. ‘He’s in bed, I hope.’
‘You happen to know one another?’ Archie says.
I tug at Ben’s baseball cap. ‘We bump into one another in the park.’
‘In the teahouse,’ says the boy. ‘He and Mummy love to talk.’ He looks at me. ‘She would love to act in a film you were in. So would I. I’m going to be an actor. The boys at school think you’re the best.’
‘Thank you.’ I look at Archie. ‘Expensive school too, I bet.’
He stands there looking away, but his mind is working.
I say to Ben, ‘What
do you think of Mummy in this play?’
‘Brilliant.’
‘What is your true opinion?’ says Archie to me. ‘As a man of the theatre and film?’
‘She seems at ease on stage.’
‘Will she go any further?’
‘The more she does it, the better she will get.’
‘Is that how it works?’ he says. ‘Is that how you made it?’
‘Partly. I am talented, too.’
He looks at me with hatred and says, ‘She will do it more, you think?’
‘If she is to improve she will have to.’
He seems both proud and annoyed, with a cloudy look, as if the familiar world is disappearing into the mist. Until now she has followed him. I wonder whether he will be able to follow her, and whether she will want him to.
I have gone inside and found my friends, when he is at my elbow, interrupting, with something urgent to say.
‘I love Florence more and more as time passes,’ he tells me. ‘Just wanted you to know that.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Good.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Right. See you downstairs.’
Four Blue Chairs
After a lunch of soup, bread and tomato salad, John and Dina go out on to the street. At the bottom of the steps they stop for a moment and he slips his arm through hers as he always does. They have been keen to establish little regularities, to confirm that they are used to doing things together.
Today the sun beats down and the city streets seem deserted, as if everyone but them has gone on holiday. At the moment they feel they are on a kind of holiday themselves.
They would prefer to carry blankets, cushions, the radio and numerous lotions out on to the patio. Weeds push up between the paving stones and cats lie on the creeper at the top of the fence as the couple lie there in the afternoons, reading, drinking fizzy lemonade and thinking over all that has happened.
Except that the store has rung to say the four blue chairs are ready. Dina and John can’t wait for them to be delivered, but must fetch them this afternoon because Henry is coming to supper tonight. They shopped yesterday; of the several meals they have learned to prepare, they will have salmon steaks, broccoli, new potatoes and three-bean salad.