‘And you’ve only just come home,’ Charlie added.
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘Still... I couldn’t have said no.’
‘No.’
‘Not that it’ll do much good.’
‘You never know, you might spot something.’
‘Very doubtful.’
‘But,’ she said with a touch of anxiety, ‘you will do your best?’
‘Of course, love.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re cleverer than you think.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sure.’
She made a face, and we went some way in silence. Then she said, ‘When you went out to look at those two young chasers in her paddock, Nerissa told me what is the matter with her.’
‘Did she?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Some ghastly thing called Hodgkin’s disease, which makes her glands swell, or something, and turn cellular, whatever that really means. She didn’t know very clearly herself, I don’t think. Except that it is absolutely fatal.’
Poor Nerissa.
‘She also told me,’ Charlie went on, ‘that she has left us a keepsake each in her will.’
‘Has she really?’ I turned my head to look at Charlie. ‘How kind of her. Did she say what?’
‘Keep your eyes on the road, for heaven’s sake. No, she didn’t say what. Just something to remember her by. She said she had quite enjoyed herself, drawing up her new will and giving people presents in it. Isn’t she amazing?’
‘She is.’
‘She really meant it. And she is so pleased that her nephew has turned out well. I’ve never seen anyone like that before... dying, and quite calm about it... and even enjoying things, like making a will... and knowing... knowing...’
I glanced at her sideways. Tears on Charlie’s cheeks. She seldom cried, and didn’t like to be watched.
I kept my eyes on the road.
I telephoned my agent and stunned him.
‘But,’ he stuttered, ‘you never go anywhere, you always refuse... you thumped my table and shouted about it...’
‘Quite,’ I agreed. ‘But now I want a good reason for going to South Africa, so are any of my films due to open there soon, or are they not?’
‘Well...’ he sounded thoroughly disorganised. ‘Well, I’ll have to look it up. And are you sure,’ he added in disbelief, ‘that if one of them is due to open, you really and truly want me to tell them you’ll turn up in person?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Yes. I just don’t believe it.’
He rang back an hour later.
‘There are two, coming up. They are showing One Way to Moscow in Cape Town, starting Monday week. That’s the first in a series of six revivals, so although Moscow itself is pretty old, you could turn up to give the whole lot a boost. Or there’s the opening of Rocks in Johannesburg. But that’s not until September 14th. Three weeks off. Is that soon enough?’
‘Not really.’ I pondered. ‘It will have to be the Johannesburg one, though.’
‘All right. I’ll fix it. And... er... does the sudden change of heart extend to chat shows and newspaper interviews?’
‘No, it does not.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
I had taken home from Nerissa’s house all her trainer’s letters, all the South African Racing Calendars, newspaper cuttings and magazines she had been sent, and all the details of breeding and racing form of her eleven non-winning youngsters. A formidable bulk of paper, it had proved; and not miraculously easy to understand.
The picture which emerged, though, was enough to make anyone think, let alone the owner of the horses in question. Nine of the eleven had run nicely when they began their racing careers, and between December and May had clocked up a joint total of fourteen wins. Since the middle of May, none of them had finished nearer than fourth.
As far as I could judge from a limited squint at the leading-sires tables and the breeding notes section of the South African Horse and Hound, all of them were of impeccable pedigree, and certainly, from the amounts she had laid out, Nerissa’s sister Portia had bought no bargains. None of them had so far won enough prize money to cover their purchase price, and with every resounding defeat their future stud value, too, slid a notch towards zero.
As a bequest, the South African horses were a lump of lead.
Charlie came with me to Heathrow to see me off, as I had been home only nine days, which hadn’t been long enough for either of us. While we were waiting at the check-in counter half a dozen ladies asked for my autograph for their daughters — nephews — grandchildren — and a few eyes swivelled our way; and presently a dark-uniformed airline official appeared at our side and offered a small private room for waiting in. They were pretty good about that sort of thing, as I came through the airport fairly often, and we accepted gratefully.
‘It’s like being married to two people,’ Charlie sighed, sitting down. ‘The public you, and the private you. Quite separate. Do you know, if I see one of the films, or even a clip of one on the box, I look at the pictures of you, and I think, I slept with that man last night. And it seems extraordinary, because that public you doesn’t really belong to me at all, but to all the people who pay to see you. And then you come home again, and you’re just you, my familiar husband, and the public you is some other fellow...’
I looked at her affectionately. ‘The private me has forgotten to pay the telephone bill.’
‘Well, damn it, I reminded you sixteen times...’
‘Will you pay it, then?’
‘Well, I suppose so. But the telephone bill is one of your jobs. Checking all those cables, and those phone calls to America — I don’t know what they should be. We’re probably being overcharged, if you don’t check it.’
‘Have to risk it.’
‘Honestly!’
‘It will be set off against tax, anyway.’
‘I suppose so.’
I sat down beside her. The unpaid telephone bill was as good as anything else to talk about: we no longer needed to say aloud what we were saying to each other underneath. In all our life together we had taken good-byes casually, and hellos, too. A lot of people mistook it for not caring. It was perhaps too much the opposite. We needed each other like bees and honey.
When I landed at Jan Smuts International Airport sixteen hours later, I was met by a nervous man with damp palms who introduced himself as the South African Distribution Manager for Worldic Cinemas.
‘Wenkins,’ he said. ‘Clifford Wenkins. So nice to see you.’
He had restless eyes and a clipped South African accent. About forty. Never going to be successful. Talking a little too loudly, a little too familiarly, with the sort of uneasy bonhomie I found hardest to take.
As politely as possible I removed my sleeve from his grasp.
‘Nice of you to come,’ I said; and wished he hadn’t.
‘Couldn’t let Edward Lincoln arrive without a reception, you know.’ He laughed loudly, out of nerves. I wondered idly why he should be so painfully self-conscious: as Distribution Manager he surely met film actors before breakfast every month of the year.
‘Car over here.’ He walked crabwise in front of me with his arms extended fore and aft, as if to push a path for me with the one and usher me along it with the other. There were not enough people around for it to be remotely necessary.
I followed him, carrying my suitcase and making an effort to suffer his attentions gladly.
‘Not far,’ he said anxiously, looking up placatingly at my face.
‘Fine,’ I said.
There was a group of about ten people just inside the main doors. I looked at them in disillusion: their clothes and the way they stood had ‘media’ stamped all over them, and it was without surprise that I saw the tape-recorders and cameras sprout all over as soon as we drew near.