“Amanda Royston, and I’m Jeremy Lake.”
“Mark Whitman. Hello. I was telling Jeremy I’m sorry I missed the play. I’ll try to come back and see it tomorrow.”
“That would be nice. Thanks for the drink.”
“Are you connected with the theater yourself, Mr. Whitman?”
“Call me Mark. I’m old enough to be your father but I’d rather not be reminded.” They laughed on cue and he felt encouraged. “Yes, I’ve done some acting. Not as much as I would have liked.”
Jeremy turned round in his chair. “Hey, Norrie,” he called to a bald-headed man with a baby face. “Listen to this.” He turned back to Whitman and gave him an encouraging nod.
Whitman had lost all his earlier reticence. “Am I on?” he asked. Again the group laughed; he saw appreciative faces all around him. These were his kind of people. Good old Brenda — he was easing in because of her advice. “Had I but known,” he said, “I would have rehearsed my soliloquy.”
“What do you think?” Jeremy asked.
“You may be right,” said the man called Norrie. “Let’s talk.”
There was a note of conspiracy in the air and Whitman found it exciting. Jeremy excused himself and went to an empty table in a corner where Norrie joined him. They began talking, enjoying their roles as men behind the scenes. Whitman looked at Amanda. She had spent a lot of money making the silver hair look roughly cut and unkempt. Her lipstick was pale. Most of the emphasis was on the eyes — hazel eyes outlined heavily in black, shaded with a sort of greenish-gold paste. Her face, and the sensuous way she held her mouth, belonged on the glossy cover of a pop record album.
Whitman found her easy to talk to. She laughed at the right places, and when their eyes met he experienced a feeling from over 30 years ago when all his sensations were sharp and new.
The landlord rang a bell. According to the English rule, they were closing the pub for the hiatus between three o’clock and five thirty. Jeremy and Norrie still had their heads together. “What’s happening with them?” Whitman asked.
She sized him up. “I think they want you for a part. I overheard Norrie a minute ago. He said something about ‘Death of a Salesman’.”
The character of Willie Loman in the great Arthur Miller drama had always appealed to Whitman. He had never attempted it — in his acting days he was too young. Now he had the years and the experience. “Is Norrie your director?” he asked, hardly able to believe his luck.
“Yes. Norrie Mikeljohn.” She set her glass aside half full. “I’d like it if you and I could go some place now.”
“You’d be crazy to become involved with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m fifty-two years old. You can’t be more than twenty. And you’ve got young Jeremy standing by. Never mind that I obviously like you. Don’t be confused by that.”
“What if I like you?”
She went to get her coat. Whitman waited at the door where Mikeljohn came to him and said, “Hold on, please. We don’t want to lose you.”
His voice had a scolding, spinsterish sound and his eyes, in that baby face, were narrow and reflected pain and anger.
“I plan to be around.”
“Good. I may have a part for you. It’s something I think you’ll be just right for.”
Whitman had the faintest feeling of being played with. “I’ll try anything once,” he said. “Nasty things I do repeatedly.”
“Our man to the life,” Mikeljohn said, smiling in a sophisticated way as he shook Whitman’s hand. His grip was bone-dry and astonishingly strong.
Over the director’s shoulder Whitman could see Amanda listening to Jeremy as he helped her into her coat. The garment was imitation leopard, hip-length.
Outside and walking, he found himself reluctant to bring Amanda to his room. It was upstairs over a restaurant, a seedy converted place called Margaret’s. On a wet day in March, after he got off the London train, he had lunched there, tucking in at an oilcloth-covered table by an open fire. He was the only customer. A toothless old woman came out of the kitchen and bent his ear with stories as forgettable and soothing as the Musak in his L.A. surgery. Instead of snubbing her, he found himself encouraging her to go on.
He paid his bill at a table near a flight of stairs in the front hall. A sign in a frame on the faded wallpaper advertised bed and breakfast. Next thing Whitman knew, he was registered. Almost a month later he was still living there.
The pebbles that covered Brighton beach, worn smooth by the tides, made walking a tiring effort. Amanda soldiered on in her high heels, holding Whitman’s arm formally so that he began to feel they were guests at some comic wedding. He was not sorry when she released him and went to sit on a wooden upright at the end of a breakwater. Whitman was always nervous this close to the ocean; he was never sure whether the tide was advancing or retreating. He took a deep breath. “No smog in that air,” he said.
She laughed, took him by the lapels of his conservative topcoat, and drew him close, shaking him gently. “Health freak,” she said, and kissed him. In the cold sea air her face was like a heater.
“I guess I’d better get you inside before we freeze.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Whitman’s room, small, untidy, with its ancient bed and gloomy oak furniture, seemed cosy with two people in it. He snapped on the electric fire while she hung their coats on the back of the door.
“I’ve only got bourbon,” he said.
“I don’t want a drink.” She arranged herself on the bed with a pillow behind her back. She had taken off her shoes to reveal large feet in nylon.
Whitman tried to understand why he was so ill at ease with this girl. The action in London had been positive, and from his point of view, a great success. But of course — those girls were strangers brought back to a hotel room for one reason only. This was Amanda Royston, a member of the group he hoped to join.
“My child,” he said, feeling relief now that he knew how to play the scene, “I am not the last of the red-hot lovers. I hope I haven’t misled you.” He drew over a chair, sat beside the bed, and took her hand.
“I know that. What do you think I am? I’m here because I like your company.” She pinged a fingernail against the glass he was holding. “Drink your medicine and tell me things about yourself.”
Pale light through the window identified a different time of day. Whitman was lying on the bed now, Amanda seated in the chair, turning the pages of a paperback too quickly to be reading it. He must have fallen asleep. He remembered her shifting over and allowing him half of the pillow. They had kissed a few times, retaining a mood of humor that absolved him from going further. Then the whisky must have taken over.
“What time is it?” he said, rising onto an elbow.
“Just after eight.”
“We have to get going. Due up the hill.” The idea that he would bring Amanda with him to Brenda Belziel’s was spontaneous. The invitation had been for him alone, but why not take this pretty girl?
Amanda was happy to tag along. She deciphered the address from Whitman’s scrawl and said they could walk there. He washed, changed into a white shirt, and put on a dark jacket and striped tie. “Mister bank manager,” Amanda said.
“Don’t shoot the bank manager. He is doing his best.”
“To rip off the public. Have you checked interest rates lately?”
He could have explained that high interest was keeping his investments ahead of soaring inflation but he sensed it would be the wrong thing to say to Amanda. He thought she resembled his daughter, who despised the system so much she had gone to live among the poorest people on earth. Or was it her father she despised? Whenever this suspicion arose in Whitman’s mind he tried not to give it thinking room.