At nine-thirty — the bell shook him badly — the telephone rang. It was Araba Nightwing, breathless, drawling with apology in her deep attractive voice.
‘I’m at the theatre, Mr Gawber,’ she said. ‘It’s the interval, so this will have to be short, I’m afraid. I’m so glad I finally reached you. I’ve been thinking about you the whole day — well, ever since you rang —’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It’s quite all right.’ In the background he heard the thump of seats, the babble of the audience, shouts.
‘No, it’s not —’
He winced and held the receiver away from his ear.
‘— it’s unforgivable. I don’t know what got into me. It’s just this frightful business — all these rehearsals — and I’ve got so much on my mind these days. I’ve just been to the Continent — Rotterdam, nothing special. But I was rude to you.’
‘No harm done.’
‘I’m an absolute bloody bitch.’
He winced again: who was listening? ‘Miss Nightwing —’
‘You’re too kind to say it, but it’s true. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. How can you be so kind to a bitch like me?’
‘I find it very easy.’
‘Because you’re so good! I don’t deserve it. But this play is such rubbish I can’t help myself. People say it’s destroying me. I can’t help that, and I was a bitch before it opened, as you know. Last year it was the same thing, that business with the fascist bank.’
‘Swiss bank, but that’s best forgotten.’
‘I tried to ring you before the show. Your wife said you weren’t there.’
‘No — I —’ Was she asking for an explanation? ‘I was held up. Rather a long story.’
‘It’s the story of my life. Mr Gawber, I want you to know that I’m very sorry. I don’t want you to get involved in this in any way.’
Involved in what? He said, ‘It’s just the small matter of your tax return. You’ve had a good year. An excellent year. Unfortunately.’
‘Oh, God!’
‘We’ll have a chat. It’ll sort itself out. You’ll see.’
‘But I don’t have the slightest intention — there goes the first bell. I must fly. My face —’
‘Don’t make yourself late, my dear.’
‘The reason I rang is that I have some tickets for you and your wife. They’re good seats, but the play’s pretty dreadful, utter crap really, a McGravy sit-com, Tea for Three. Naturally it’s a smash-hit, it’s always full — Americans and the coach-crowd. But it’s a night out and you could come backstage and meet Blanche and Dick. They’re awfully sweet.’
‘Are you sure it’s no trouble?’
‘I think that was another bell. No, no trouble at all. The tickets are for next month, the nineteenth — I hope that’s all right. I’d love to meet your wife. I just wish this play was better.’
‘We’ll be delighted —’
‘Tickets at the box office. Don’t pay attention to what I say. I don’t care if they expel me — I hate myself. You’re the kindest man I’ve ever met. Another bell! Bye!’
Norah watched him put the receiver into its cradle. He sighed and reported what the actress had said.
‘But that’s splendid,’ Norah said. ‘Tea for Three’s had wonderful notices.’
Glamour: he was glad. The day had been saved for her. He so seldom knew how to please her. She would have her hair done and meet him in town. An early dinner at Wheeler’s: Norah would have the prawn cocktail and he would have whitebait, and somehow Norah would find an occasion to say, ‘The lemon sole looks good.’ At the play she would eat half a pound of chocolates. She would remark on the scenery — she loved plays for that. Stage-sets dazzled her, and though she could never recall the title of a play, much less a line, she could describe in tedious detail the sets she’d seen before the war at the Lewisham Hippodrome in Catford, now torn down. There was nothing she liked more than to see the curtains go up and reveal on the stage a great frigate’s butt, fully rigged, with sails. Shakespeare was not always a good bet, but she remembered the fantastic trapezes in one play and the cushions when Araba had played Cleopatra; and still she mentioned the pyramids and the golden disc of sun in that play about the Incas. Tea for Three did not sound promising — perhaps a parlour — but Mr Gawber was hopeful. In any case, Norah would come away praising the bookshelves, the crockery, the wallpaper.
He would hate the play for its fakery, unless a door stuck, or some sudden accident intervened to give the play a brief jolt of reality. He always enjoyed seeing heavy men in blue boiler suits striding on stage between scenes to rearrange the furniture; those thumps and grunts; or simply an unexplained crash behind a closed curtain. Otherwise he would find it a mediocre puppet show — why didn’t they use puppets? — and he would sleep without changing position, the way he did on the train. Play dialogue and the presence of actors and even the heat and light of a theatre — the great mob ignoring itself — embarrassed him. It was like filing into church, but the wrong one.
That night in bed, he still heard voices in the road and the feet of people passing below. He wanted the limpers on their beam-ends. He had started the day happy, in that fog, and then the day had heated and turned strange for him, disturbing him to his very bones. He had tried to give it order, but failed: there were too many contending voices. So it closed in a babble, the people darting at his eyes — no wonder they called them gorillas. That was the whole of his life, a kind of concealment, guarding against alarm. And it was odd because it was all caution, so secretive, just the two of them hiding in their enormous shadowy house: it was the way he imagined conspirators to live.
5
‘The kids were asleep,’ Mayo hissed. ‘I had to climb the back fence and break the door to get in.’
Hood laughed, but darkly: she had given him a fright. He had entered by the back and seen the great crack in the door and the smashed tongue of the lock. Then in the kitchen he had seen a small man in an old pin-striped jacket, a tweed cap and gloves. He was on the point of kicking him in the ankles when the man turned: Mayo in her burglar’s get-up, and she said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
Now she said, ‘Murf can fix it. I’ll buy a new door.’
They were still in the kitchen: her gloves and jacket were on the chair. She slipped her cap off and shook out her hair. Hood pulled the broken door shut and said, ‘I thought you were supposed to be good at that sort of thing.’
‘I got in, didn’t I?’
‘Don’t take house-breaking literally, sweetheart. You nearly tore it off its hinges! What a burglar. It’s lucky you don’t depend on it for your living. You’d starve.’
‘Don’t race your motor.’ He stared almost bewildered at the painting that had lain stiffly rolled on the kitchen table when he came in. It was Flemish, and though it had been pictured in most of the newspapers in the past week, the real thing had none of the clarity of the little black and white reproductions. It was smaller than he had expected; it had a coarseness of texture; it yielded to no pattern. The reflection of the over-bright kitchen light crazed its roughened surface with glare, giving it the opacity and flaky shine of a piece of old leather. It was creased and scratched; it wouldn’t lie flat. Hood looked for a long time at the dark varnish before he recognized under the layers of that leathery yellow the face, the hat, the arms, the long boots. It was not large, and yet he had to study it in parts, losing the order of its composition as his eye moved in ellipses from section to section. At first he saw only rough shapes, like separated jigsaw pieces, and it was not until he set it at an angle to the light — spread it on the floor and stood on a chair above it — that he grasped the whole of it: the figure in the chalk-white collar and sombre hat posed peevishly by the window; the summer landscape outside that was dead still, and the carved posts of the interior furniture. It was dark, nearly all shadow, almost crudely done in melting solids, and it had the rank smell of a dusty attic. Artists painted not moods but conditions in their self-portraits, and this one by Rogier van der Weyden showed the sullen impatience of an unwilling exile.