Kurtz ruefully acknowledged the point.
‘But for us – rich English suburban kids from Nowheresville – forget it. We had no traditions, no faith, no self-awareness, no nothing.’
‘But you told me your mother was Catholic.’
‘Christmas and Easter. Pure hypocrisy. We’re the post-Christian era, Mart. Didn’t anybody tell you? Faith leaves a vacuum behind it when it goes away. We’re in it.’
As she said this, she caught Litvak’s smouldering eyes upon her and received the first hint of his rabbinical anger.
‘No going to confession?’ Kurtz asked.
‘Come off it. Mum didn’t have anything to confess! That’s her whole trouble. No fun, no sin, no nothing. Just apathy and fear. Fear of life, fear of death, fear of the neighbours – fear. Somewhere out there, real people were living real lives. Just not us. Not in Rickmansworth. No way. I mean, Christ – for children – I mean talk about castration!’
‘And you – no fear?’
‘Only of being like Mum.’
‘And this notion we all have – ancient England steeped in her traditional ways?’
‘Forget it.’
Kurtz smiled and shook his wise head as if to say you could always learn.
‘So as soon as you could, you left home and you took refuge in the stage and radical politics,’ he suggested contentedly. ‘You became a political exile to the stage. I read that somewhere, some interview you gave. I liked it. Go on from there.’
She was back to doodling again, more symbols of the psyche. ‘Oh, there were other ways of breaking out before that,’ she said.
‘Such as?’
‘Well, sex, you know,’ said Charlie carelessly. ‘I mean we haven’t even touched on sex as the essential basis of revolt, have we? Or drugs.’
‘We haven’t touched on revolt,’ said Kurtz.
‘Well, take it from me, Mart –’
Then a strange thing happened: proof, perhaps, of how a perfect audience can extract the best from a performer and improve her in spontaneous, unexpected ways. She had been on the brink of giving them her set piece for the unliberated. How the discovery of self was an essential prelude to identifying with the radical movement. How when the history of the new revolution came to be written, its true roots would be found in the drawing-rooms of the middle classes, where repressive tolerance had its natural home. Instead of which, to her surprise, she heard herself enumerating aloud for Kurtz – or was it for Joseph? – her rows and rows of early lovers and all the stupid reasons she had invented for going to bed with them. ‘It’s completely beyond me, Mart,’ she insisted, once more opening her hands disarmingly. Was she using them too much? She feared she might be, and put them in her lap. ‘Even today. I didn’t want them, I didn’t like them, I just let them.’ The men she had taken out of boredom, anything to move the stale air of Rickmansworth, Mart. Out of curiosity. Men to prove her power, men to avenge herself against other men, or against other women, against her sister or her bloody mother. Men out of politeness, Mart, out of sheer bone-weariness at their persistence. The casting couches – Christ, Mart, you can’t imagine! Men to break the tension, men to create it. Men to inform her – her political enlighteners, appointed to explain to her in bed the things she could never get her mind round from the books. The five-minute lusts that smashed like pottery in her hands and left her lonelier than ever. Failures, failures – every one of them, Mart – or so she wanted him to believe. ‘But they freed me, don’t you see? I was using my own body in my own way! Even if it was the wrong way. It was my show!’
While Kurtz nodded sagely, Litvak wrote swiftly at his side. But in her secret mind she was picturing Joseph seated behind her. She imagined him looking up from his reading, his strong index finger laid along his smooth cheek, while he received the private gift of her amazing openness. Scoop me up, she was saying to him; give me what the others never could.
Then she fell quiet and her own silence chilled her. Why had she done that? In her entire life she had never played that part before, not even to herself. The timeless hour of the night had affected her. The lighting, the upstairs room, the sense of travel, of talking to strangers on a train. She wanted to sleep. She’d done enough. They must give her the part or send her home, or both.
But Kurtz did neither. Not yet. Instead, he called a short interval, picked up his watch, and buckled it to his wrist by its khaki webbing strap. Then he bustled from the room, taking Litvak with him. She waited for a footfall from behind her as Joseph also left, but none came. And still none. She wanted to turn her head but didn’t quite dare. Rose brought her a glass of sweet tea, no milk. Rachel had some sugar-coated biscuits, like English shortbread. Charlie took one.
‘You’re doing great,’ Rachel confided breathlessly. ‘You really laid it on the line about England. I just sat there drinking it in, didn’t I, Rose?’
‘She really did,’ said Rose.
‘It’s just how I feel,’ Charlie explained.
‘Do you want the loo, love?’ said Rachel.
‘No thanks. I never do between acts.’
‘Right then,’ said Rachel, with a wink.
Sipping, Charlie propped an elbow on the back of her chair in order to be able to glance naturally over her shoulder. Joseph had vanished, taking his papers with him.
The resting room they had retired to was as large as the room they had left and quite as bare. A couple of army beds and a teleprinter made up the only furniture, double doors gave on to a bathroom. Becker and Litvak sat facing each other on the beds, studying their respective files; the teleprinter was tended by a straight-backed boy named David, and periodically it heaved itself and disgorged another sheet of paper, which he devoutly added to the pile at his elbow. The only other sound was the sloshing of water in the bathroom, where Kurtz, with his back to them and stripped to the waist, was dousing himself at the handbasin, like an athlete between events.
‘She’s a neat lady,’ Kurtz called as Litvak turned a page and sidelined something with a felt-tipped pen. ‘She’s everything we expected. Bright, creative, and underused.’
‘She’s lying in her teeth,’ said Litvak, still reading. But it was clear from the slant of his body, as well as the provocative insolence of his tone, that his remark was not intended for Kurtz.
‘So who’s complaining?’ Kurtz demanded, flinging more water in his face. ‘Tonight she lies for herself, tomorrow she lies for us. Do we want an angel suddenly?’
The teleprinter burst abruptly into a different song. Both Becker and Litvak glanced sharply towards it, but Kurtz appeared not to have heard. Perhaps he had water in his ears.
‘For a woman, lying is a protection. She protects the truth, so she protects her chastity. For a woman, lying is a proof of virtue,’ Kurtz announced, still washing.
Seated before the telephone, David held up his hand for attention. ‘It’s the Embassy in Athens, Marty,’ he said. ‘They want to break in with a relay from Jerusalem.’
Kurtz hesitated. ‘Tell them to go ahead,’ he said grudgingly.
‘It’s for your eyes only,’ David said and, getting up, walked across the room.
The teleprinter gave a shudder. Flinging his towel round his neck, Kurtz sat himself in David’s chair, inserted a disc, and watched the message turn to clear text. The printing ceased; Kurtz read it, then ripped the tearsheet from the roller and read it again. Then he let out an angry laugh. ‘A message from the very highest twig,’ he announced bitterly. ‘The great Rook says we are to pose as Americans. Isn’t that nice? “On no account will you admit to her you are Israeli subjects acting in official or near-official capacity.” I love it. It’s constructive, it’s helpful, it’s timely, and it’s Misha Gavron at his unmatchable best. I never in my life worked for anyone so totally dependable. Cable back, “Yes repeat no,”’ he snapped at the astonished boy, handing him the tearsheet, and the three men trooped back on stage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
To resume his li
ttle chat with Charlie, Kurtz had selected a tone of benevolent finality, as if he wished to check a few last fiddly points before moving to other things.
‘Charlie, regarding your parents once more,’ he was saying. Litvak had pulled a file from his briefcase, and was holding it out of Charlie’s line of sight.
‘Regarding them,’ she said, and reached bravely for a cigarette.
Kurtz took a little break while he studied certain documents that Litvak had slipped into his hand. ‘Looking at the final phase of your father’s life now, his crash, financial disgrace, death, and so forth. Can we just confirm with you the exact sequence of those events? You were at English boarding school. The terrible news came. Take it from there, please.’
She didn’t quite follow him. ‘From where?’
‘The news comes. Go on from there.’
She shrugged. ‘The school threw me out, I went home, the bailiffs were swarming over the house like rats. We’ve been there, Mart. What else is there?’
‘The headmistress sent for you, you said,’ Kurtz reminded her after a pause. ‘Great. So what did she say? Precisely, please?’
‘“Sorry but I’ve asked Matron to pack your things. Goodbye and good luck.” Far as I remember.’
‘Oh, you’d remember that,’ said Kurtz with quiet good humour, leaning across to take another look at Litvak’s papers. ‘No homily from her on the big wicked world out there?’ he asked, still reading. ‘“Don’t give yourself away too easy” type of thing? No? No explanation of why, exactly, you were being asked to leave?’
‘The fees hadn’t been paid for two terms already – isn’t that enough? They’re in business, Mart. They’ve got their bank account to think of. This was a private school, remember?’ She made a show of weariness. ‘Don’t you think we’d better call it a day? I can’t think why but I seem to be a trifle flaked.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. You are rested and you have resources. So you went home. By rail?’
‘All the way by rail. On my own. With my little suitcase. Homeward bound.’ She stretched, and smiled around the room, but Joseph’s head was turned away from her. He seemed to be listening to other music.
‘And you came home to what precisely?’
‘To chaos. I told you.’
‘Just specify the chaos a little, will you?’
‘Furniture van in the drive. Men in aprons. Mother weeping. Half my room already emptied.’
‘Where was Heidi?’
‘Not there. Absent. Not counted among those present.’
‘Nobody sent for her? Your elder sister, the apple of your father’s eye? Living ten miles up the road? Safely married? Why didn’t Heidi come over and help?’
‘Pregnant, I expect,’ said Charlie carelessly, looking at her hands. ‘She usually is.’
But Kurtz was looking at Charlie, and he took a good long time to say anything at all. ‘Who did you say was pregnant, please?’ he asked, as if he hadn’t quite heard.
‘Heidi.’
‘Charlie, Heidi was not pregnant. Heidi’s first pregnancy occurred the following year.’
‘All right, she wasn’t pregnant for once.’
‘So why didn’t she come along, lend some family help?’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to know. She stayed away, that’s all I remember. Mart, for Christ’s sake, it’s ten years ago. I was a kid, a different person.’
‘It was the disgrace, huh? Heidi couldn’t take the disgrace. Of your father’s bankruptcy, I mean.’
‘What other disgrace was there?’ she snapped.
Kurtz treated her question rhetorically. He was back at his papers, watching Litvak’s long finger point things out to him. ‘In any case, Heidi stayed away and the entire responsibility of coping with the family crisis fell upon your young shoulders, okay? Charlie, aged a mere sixteen, to the rescue. Her “crash course in the fragility of the capitalist system”, as you put it so nicely a while back. “An object lesson you never forgot.” All the toys of consumerism – pretty furniture – pretty dresses – all the attributes of bourgeois respectability – you saw them physically dismantled and removed before your very eyes. You alone. Managing. Disposing. In undisputed mastery over your pathetic bourgeois parents who should have been working class but carelessly were not. Consoling them. Easing them in their disgrace. Almost a kind of absolution you gave them, I guess. Tough,’ he added sadly. ‘Very, very tough,’ and stopped dead, waiting for her to speak.
But she didn’t. She stared him out. She had to. His slashed features had undergone a mysterious hardening, particularly around the eyes. But she stared him out all the same; she had a special way of doing it left over from her childhood, of freezing her face into an ice-picture, and thinking other thoughts behind it. And she won, she knew she did, because Kurtz spoke first, which was the proof.
‘Charlie, we recognise that this is very painful for you, but we ask you to continue in your own words. We have the van. We see your possessions leaving the house. What else do we see?’
‘My pony.’
‘They took that too?’
‘I told you already.’
‘With the furniture? In the same van?’
‘No, a separate one. Don’t be bloody silly.’
‘So there were two vans. Both at the same time? Or one after the other?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Where was your father physically located all this time? Was he in the study? Looking through the window, say, watching it all go? How does a man like him bear up – in his disgrace?’
‘He was in the garden.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Looking at the roses. Staring at them. He kept saying they mustn’t take the roses. Whatever happened. He kept saying it, on and on. “If they take my roses, I’ll kill myself.”’
‘And your mother?’
‘Mums was in the kitchen. Cooking. It was the only thing she could think of to do.’
‘Gas or electricity?’
‘Electricity.’
‘But did I mishear you or did you say the company switched the power off?’
‘They reconnected it.’
‘And they didn’t take away the cooker?’
‘They have to leave it by law. The cooker, a table, a chair for everyone in the house.’
‘Knives and forks?’
‘One set for each person.’
‘Why didn’t they just sequester the house? Throw you all out?’
‘It was in Mother’s name. She’d insisted on it years before.’
‘Wise woman. However, it was in your father’s. And where, did you say, did the headmistress read about your father’s bankruptcy?’
She had almost lost it. For a second, the images inside her head had wavered, but now they hardened again, providing her with the words she needed: her mother, in her mauve headscarf, bowed over the cooker, frantically making bread-and-butter pudding, a family favourite. Her father, grey-faced and mute in his blue double-breasted blazer, staring at the roses. The headmistress, hands behind her back, warming her tweed rump before the unlit fire in her imposing drawing-room.
‘In the London Gazette,’ she replied stolidly. ‘Where everybody’s bankruptcies are reported.’
‘The headmistress was a subscriber to this journal?’
‘Presumably.’
Kurtz gave a long slow nod, then picked up a pencil and wrote the one word presumably on a pad before him, in a way that made it visible to Charlie. ‘So. And after the bankruptcy came the fraud charges. That right? Want to describe the trial?’
‘I told you. Father wouldn’t let us be there. At first he was going to defend himself – be a hero. We were to sit in the front seats and cheer him on. When they showed him the evidence, he changed his mind.’
‘What was the charge?’
‘Stealing clients’ money.’
‘How long did he get?’
‘Eighteen months, less remission. I told you, Mart. I said it all to you befo
re. What is this?’
‘Ever visit him in prison?’
‘He wouldn’t let us. He didn’t want us to see his shame.’
‘His shame,’ Kurtz echoed thoughtfully. ‘His disgrace. The Fall. It really got to you, didn’t it?’
‘Would you like me better if it hadn’t?’
‘No, Charlie, I don’t suppose I would.’ He took another small break. ‘Well, there we are. So you stayed home. Gave up school, forsook the proper instruction of your excellent developing mind, looked after your mother, waited for your father’s release. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Never went near the prison once?’
‘Jesus,’ she muttered hopelessly. ‘Why do you keep twisting the knife like this?’
‘Not even near it?’
‘No!’
She was holding back her tears with a courage they must surely admire. How could she take it? they must be wondering – either then or now? Why did he persist in tapping away so remorselessly at her secret scars? The silence was like a pause between screams. The only sound was from Litvak’s ballpoint pen as it flew across the pages of his notebook.
‘Any of that any use to you, Mike?’ Kurtz asked of Litvak, without turning his gaze from her.
‘Great,’ Litvak breathed as his pen continued racing. ‘It’s gritty, it adds up, we can use it. I just wonder whether she might have a catchy anecdote for that prison stuff somewhere. Or maybe when he came out is better – the final months – why not?’
‘Charlie?’ said Kurtz shortly, passing on Litvak’s enquiry.
Charlie made a show of pondering for them till inspiration came to her. ‘Well, there was the thing about the doors,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Doors?’ said Litvak. ‘What doors?’
‘Tell it to us,’ Kurtz suggested.
A beat while Charlie lifted one hand and delicately pinched the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb, indicating deepest grief and a slight migraine. She had told the story often, but never as well as this. ‘We weren’t expecting him for another month – he didn’t phone, how could he? We’d moved house. We were on National Assistance. He just showed up. Looked slimmer, younger. Hair cut. “Hullo, Chas, I’m out.” Gave me a hug. Wept. Mums upstairs, too scared to come down to him. He was completely unchanged. Except for the doors. He couldn’t open them. He’d go up to them, stop, stand at attention with his feet together and his head down, and wait for the warder to come and unlock them.’