It was ten days before I returned, red-eyed and exhausted from the thirteen-hour flight, still irritated by the shooting delays we had encountered and still oppressed by the memory of the heat and humidity. It had been difficult work, constantly hampered by lack of cooperation and bureaucracy. At every new place we went to film we had to be approved by the local officers in charge, all of whom were suspicious of us or hostile to us. In the end the work had been done, the money had been paid. I was glad it was over.
I went back to my flat, and although I was tired I was restless and discontented. London felt cold and damp, but after the shanty towns and slums of Central America it looked tidy, prosperous, modern. I stayed in the flat long enough to look through my mail, then collected my car and drove over to see Sue.
One of the other people in the house opened the door to me, and I went straight to her room and knocked. There was a delay, but I could hear movement inside. In a moment the door opened, and Sue stood there with a dressing gown held around her. We stared at each other for a moment.
Then she said, “You’d better come in.”
As she said this she gave a half-look over her shoulder as if someone was there, and when I walked in I was braced for a confrontation. Dread filled me.
The room smelt musty, and was in semidarkness. The curtains were closed, but daylight filtered through the thin material. Sue crossed the room and pulled them open. Outside was a brick wall forming a small drainage well, and bushes and overgrown grass stood in the garden above this, shading the room. The air had a faint blue haze to it, as if someone had been smoking, but I could not smell tobacco.
She had been in bed when I arrived, because the covers were thrown back and her clothes were draped over a chair. On the bedside table was a small, shallow dish, and lying in this were three cigarette ends.
I glared around suspiciously, looking for Niall.
Sue walked past me and closed the door. She stood by it, leaning her back against it and holding the gown wrapped over her body. She would not look at me, and her hair, untidy and tangled, concealed most of her face. I could see, though, that her mouth and chin were reddened.
I said, “Where’s Niall?”
“Can you see him here?”
“Of course I can’t. Is he in the house?” She shook her head. “Why are you still in bed?”
I glanced at my wristwatch, but it was still set on Central American time. The plane had landed in London soon after dawn, so I guessed that by now it must be nearly midday.
“I’m not working today—I was having a lie-in.” She crossed the room and sat down on the bed. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“Why? Why the hell do you think? I just arrived back, and I came to see you!”
“I thought you’d telephone first.”
“You promised me this wouldn’t happen.”
She said quietly, “Niall found me. He followed me home from work one evening, and I couldn’t argue with him.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About a week. Look, I know what this means. Don’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t go on being torn between the two of you. Niall isn’t going to leave me alone as long as I’m with you, so it will never work, whatever you make me promise.”
“I never extracted a promise from you,” I said.
“All right, but it’s finished now.”
“You’re damned right it’s finished!”
“Let’s leave it at that.”
I could barely hear what she said. She was huddled on the bed, her arms folded in her lap, leaning forward so that all I could see of her was the top of her head and her shoulders. She had turned slightly to one side, facing the table. I noticed that the ashtray was no longer there, that somehow she must have moved it. I knew by this guilty concealment that Niall had been there just before I arrived.
“I’ll go now,” I said. “But tell me one thing. I don’t understand the hold Niall has over you. Why do you let him do this to you? Is he going to run your life forever?”
She said, “He’s glamorous, Richard.”
“You said that before. What’s glamour got to do with it?”
“Not glamour, the glamour. Niall has got the glamour.”
“This is what’s so ridiculous! You can’t be serious!”
“It’s the most important thing in my life. Yours too.”
She looked up at me then, a thin, sad figure, sitting in the mess of crumpled sheets that were heaped across the mattress. She had started crying, silently, hopelessly.
“I’m going,” I said. “Don’t contact me again.”
She stood up, uncoiling stiffly as if in pain.
“Don’t you know you’re glamorous, Richard?” she said. “I love you for your glamour.”
“I don’t want to hear another word!”
“You can’t change. The glamour will never leave you. This is why Niall won’t let me go … when you understand the glamour, you’ll know that’s true.”
Then, somewhere in the room, somewhere behind me, I heard the sound of a male laugh. I saw that the full-length door of the wardrobe had been open all along, that there was space behind it for someone to hide. Niall was there, he had been there all along! Heady with anger I lunged at the door of the room, wrenched it open, saw the bright glint of the stainless-steel bolts. I went outside, slamming the door behind me. I was too angry to drive so I hurried down the road, moving away from her as fast as I could. I walked and walked, heading home, wanting only in the blackness of rage to get away from her. I went up the long hill toward Archway, crossed the viaduct into Highgate, then started down toward Hampstead Heath. My anger was like a narcotic, turning my brain in a relentless swirl of vicious resentments. I knew I was tired from the long flight, that jet lag was no condition in which to be rational about anything, least of all this. London seemed like a hallucination around me; the glimpse from the Heath of the tall buildings to the south, the old red brick terraces on the far side, the people in the streets and the endless noise of traffic. I cut through side streets lined with Victorian villas; plane trees and ornamental cherries and crab apples now tired at the end of summer; cars parked on both sides, wheels up on the pavements. I pushed past people, hardly seeing them, ran across Finchley Road, dodging traffic. It was downhill to West Hampstead, long straight roads with cars and trucks, people waiting for buses or moving slowly from one shop to another. I shoved past them all, thinking now only of getting home, going to bed, trying to sleep off my anger and my jet lag. I turned into West End Lane, almost home. The walking had clarified my mind: no more Sue, no more Niall, no more raised hopes or broken promises or evasions or lies. From now I was going to live only for myself, never fool myself that love was simple. I hated Sue, everything she had done to me, regretted everything I had said to her and done with her. I passed West Hampstead station, passed the twenty-four-hour supermarket, passed the police station—all familiar landmarks, all part of my life in London before Sue. I was making plans, thinking of a job the producer had mentioned on the flight back—not news, but a documentary for the BBC, a long project, much travel. When I had recovered from this I would call him, get out of the country for a while, sleep with foreign women, work at what I did best. Something hit me low in the back, and I was hurled forward. I heard nothing, but crashed into the brick surround of a shop window; the glass shattered around me. Some part of me was rolling along the ground, twisting my back, while great heat scorched my neck and legs. As I came to a halt the only sound I could hear was of glass breaking and falling, slabs of it slicing down on top of me, an endless tormenting rain, and somewhere an immense and total silence out and around me, beyond my unseeing eyes.