Chestnut Street (11 page)

Sally and Leonard were at the table, a bottle of the evil-smelling wine already opened. No sign of the man. Perhaps he couldn’t come. Joyce told them some tales of the latest collections, and Leonard and Sally giggled like conspirators, delighted to be let in on the secrets of the rich and the famous.

“Where’s Norman, then?” she asked eventually. For once both Leonard and Sally looked a bit embarrassed.

“He’ll be a bit late—he’s been tied up,” said Sally.

“He won’t come—he’s got a cold,” said Leonard.

Everyone laughed, since it was so obvious that stories hadn’t been synchronized.

“Oh, all right,” said Sally. “Joyce is an old friend—I’ll tell her. We went to his flat to collect him, and when Leonard mentioned that you were going to be with us, Norman became all stupid.”

“He said models weren’t his scene,” said Leonard.

“He said he wouldn’t know what to say to a beautiful, leggy clotheshorse,” said Sally.

“He said that models only talked about themselves,” said Leonard. “I told him you were our friend, but he got a bit bolshie, so I said to him that it was his loss, and told him to stuff it.”

“And I said to him that he was stupid to make generalizations,
so he said he might come,” said Sally. “But I think we’ll just go ahead and order, and not pander to him.”

“And what does this Norman do for a living that he has such strong views on everything?” asked Joyce rather testily.

“He’s an actor. He’s very good, actually—we’ve seen him in quite a few things,” Sally said, her loyalty overriding her pique about Norman’s nonappearance.

“Well, actors are pretty good at talking about themselves, I would have thought,” said Joyce cheerfully, and the subject was dropped for a deep discussion about goat’s or sheep’s balls in sauce.

A huge shadow fell over the table and the fattest man that Joyce had ever seen towered there.

“Am I too late to join you?” he asked, slightly sheepishly. There was a lot of banter, and shouting, and Sally saying that they thought he was so bad-mannered perhaps he should be sent to another table as a punishment, and Leonard saying that Joyce was so broadminded she was going to allow him to sit down. Norman took her hand in his, which was about four times the size of her own.

“I’m sure it will be very nice to know you,” he said reassuringly, and then all was babble again about more wine, and whether one large salad with chopped cheese in it would be enough for the four of them or if they should have two.

Joyce wasn’t all hard; she could be very kind to old ladies who wanted to cross the road, and she was sentimental about animals or crying children. Immediately she decided that this poor guy had put on a big front about model girls being empty-headed because he was so gross and enormous, he felt that a model girl wouldn’t even talk to him. Totally forgiving of his rude remarks as had been reported to her, Joyce decided she would be charming to him and make him feel at ease.

“They tell me you are an actor, Norman,” she said, beaming a great ray of interest at him. Her lovely fine-boned face looked even better when she smiled, which was rare. Models usually
trained their faces to look well from all angles, and in what might pass for repose. “Where can one see you act?” she continued.

“I’m glad you asked that,” he said cheerfully. “Because one can see me tomorrow night on television if one has a telly.”

Joyce decided he was nervous, not rude. He couldn’t seriously be taking her on for that use of the word “one.” She didn’t like it herself; she didn’t know why she had said it.

“Oh, one has a telly.” She laughed. “But one rarely watches it. However, tomorrow is an exception. Is it in an advertisement?”

Sally’s and Leonard’s forks stopped halfway to their mouths. Norman looked amused.

“Norman’s a real actor, you know, Joyce,” said Sally. “He’s not just in advertisements.”

“Lots of real actors are in advertisements” said Joyce, flustered. She had thought he might be playing a fat Italian eating a tin of beans or some funny, clowning window cleaner falling off a ladder to get to his pint of beer. She was annoyed with herself, for her efforts to put this fatso at his ease were rebounding on her in an unexpected way.

Norman rescued her. He actually dared to rescue her. “Of course there are lots of actors in advertising, Joyce,” he said consolingly. “Lots of us wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without it, but tomorrow night is a play, a very good play, actually, a new one, by a woman. It’s her first television play and I think it’s going to go down very well.”

They all started talking about the woman, a night telephonist who got so bored with having little or no work that she wrote the play between calls.

“I play the guy who gets the girl,” said Norman.

“Is it a comedy?” asked Joyce innocently.

“No, it’s more of a thriller, really. It’s rather thoughtful and what the critics will call ‘psychological,’ ” said Norman. But he looked at Joyce levelly, and she realized with horror that he thought she had asked was it a comedy as some kind of insult.

Since she had been very young Joyce had found it easy to attract men, and to get them interested in her. She knew when to talk, when to listen, how to smile. It had worked over and over. It was still working with Charles. This fat guy was resisting her only through nerves, and she would reassure him as the meal went on. Her smile never faltered as she told him that she would certainly watch the play and was looking forward to it greatly. He smiled easily back at her. She had the oddest feeling that he knew what she was at.

Joyce managed a lot of the salad and as few of the various bits of suspicious meat as she could swallow. Norman suggested that they have a red wine as well as the paint remover, and this was much more to her taste. The early uneasiness past, she relaxed, and so it seemed did everyone else. In fact, it wasn’t a bad evening at all, she thought suddenly. There was nothing to tell Charles that would make him laugh delicately. You didn’t tell Charles that a poor, foolish, fat guy fancied you pathetically. That would be embarrassing, and it wasn’t funny. And in a way it wasn’t even true. Norman laughed and joked and was pleasant company. He didn’t seem ashamed of his bulk, nor apologetic for his existence. He had got over his nerves about her quite well. She must have been very successful at making him feel accepted.

Would she come back and have more coffee at Leonard and Sally’s flat? No, really she couldn’t. She had to work next day. The penalty for all this money was that you had to have eight hours’ sleep, whether you liked it or not. They did understand? They did grudgingly, but they were all disappointed. It seemed a pity to break up the evening. Joyce was determined to be gracious to the end.

“If I’m going to watch you tomorrow night on telly,” she said to Norman playfully, “would you all like to come to watch me on Friday? It’s this charity show in Park Lane, and I’ll be able to get a few tickets. There’ll be Champagne as well, so it won’t be all hell.”

Leonard and Sally were stunned. They had never been included
in the glitter of Joyce’s life. They only heard about it secondhand. They weren’t to know, of course, that Charles would be away on Friday and that in fact the tickets for the do weren’t going at all well. They looked as if they had won the football pools.

Norman looked disappointed. “This Friday? Oh, dear, I can’t, I’m afraid,” he said. No explanation of what he was doing, just regret.

“Well, we’d simply adore to, anyway,” said Sally, almost hugging herself with excitement. “Will it be very smart? Would my black dress do, do you think?”

“Is it dinner jacket?” asked Leonard. “I have a blazer and black trousers. Is that all right if I wear a bow tie as well?”

Joyce was unreasonably infuriated with them. She wanted to scream that it didn’t matter whether they came in jeans—a few of the debby types would anyway. She wanted to shout at Norman, “You stupid, ill-mannered thug. I’m being kind to you, I’m making you feel normal, acceptable. Why haven’t you the manners and the sensitivity to see that and accept it?” But years of hiding real feelings came to her aid.

“The black dress would be super, darling, and blazers are really the equivalent of dinner jackets, I think they’re even nicer, Leonard. I’ll get the tickets to you, and I’ll meet you after the prancing-around bit and introduce you to people.”

Then in a very casual voice to Norman: “Are you sure we can’t persuade you to change your mind, Norman? After all, you did change it about coming here tonight, I’m happy to say.”

“Not Friday, unfortunately,” said Norman. “I’m meeting Grace, who wrote the play. You see, she’s thinking of writing a one-man show for me and it’s only in the very early stages yet, so we decided we’d have a read-through of the bit she’s done, to see how it works.”

“Couldn’t she do that another day or night?” asked Joyce icily.

“I’m sure she could, but it would be awful to ask her to change it. I wouldn’t let her down. She’s getting herself geared to have
it ready by Friday. You can’t say suddenly that you can’t make it because you’re going to a fashion show. I mean it would be like slapping a friend in the face.”

“Of course,” tinkled Joyce. “But I’ll be loyal to you anyway and watch tomorrow night.”

There was the marvelous, graceful goodbyeing and thankyouing that Joyce was just so good at, and at the very minute she wanted a taxi, one appeared, and she was gone with a whiff of the most expensive perfume that money can buy.

Norman let himself into his flat and sat down on the huge swivel chair, which was the only thing he owned in the furnished apartment. He loved this chair; he took it everywhere with him and left it in his brother’s house if he was in between flats or off on tour. He could think in this chair, and he wanted to think about the evening.

Yes, he thought, letting the air out of his lungs in a big sigh of relief, yes, it had worked. It had been so hard at the beginning but it had worked. He had nearly blown it by telling Sally and Leonard that he didn’t like talking to model girls because they were so self-centered and empty. That was the trouble with Sally and Leonard: they were so nice and undevious you found yourself telling them the truth … or nearly the truth, anyway. Thank heavens he had managed to force himself into going. It was another hurdle, another notch, another score, whatever way you counted it. And, actually, she hadn’t been bad, that Joyce—she wasn’t by any means the worst of her trade, probably. In fact, he had imagined on occasions that
she
had felt a bit unsure of herself, not quite in control of everything and everyone. It had warmed his heart to see that, and he had admired her professionally for the way she got out of it. Grace would be proud of him; he’d tell her all about it tomorrow night when they were watching the play together.

Grace had taken him on as one of her projects. Grace had changed her life. They had met a year ago, when Grace’s play
had been accepted for television. She was seventy-two, she had a face like a monkey, she had the hardest life that anyone Norman had ever met could have lived. She had nursed a dying mother, a dying father, a dying husband, a dying son. That’s why she was a night worker. It was easier to get someone to sit with the dying for a few hours at night than in the daytime. Grace had never known any money, any success and very little happiness. She had never expected any. Her one rage was that she hadn’t written a play when she was twenty-one, instead of when she was seventy-one. She had known as much fifty years ago as she knew now.

She and Norman had met at the first rehearsal. Norman had been his old self then, laughing at himself too soon, too loudly, making jokes about being too big for the chair, too heavy for the floor or the stage, telling tales about how he got stuck in a bus seat.

“Why do you go on like that, lad?” Grace had asked him.

“Well, if I say it first, I suppose I think that people will know I realize I’m fat, and then we can all settle down again,” said Norman honestly. He had never asked himself about this comedy routine. It just worked—that’s all.

“I was settled down already,” said Grace.

The director had wanted to play the hero as a buffoon; that’s why he had cast Norman. He was going to make Norman into a ludicrous, no-hope guy, which made it whimsical and rather sweet that he got the girl in the end.

“That’s not the way I wrote it,” said Grace.

Oh, there had been a lot of taking her aside and explaining how important a director was, and how his views were sacred, and how Grace knew nothing about drama. She was adamant.

“He’s not a foolish character, he’s a strong character,” she repeated. “There would be no point in the story if he was a buffoon.”

“But,” said the director, “that’s why I cast Norman. He’s a
character actor. If we wanted a straight hero, we’d have got someone totally different. Not his shape, if you see what I mean.”

“Everybody has to be some shape,” said Grace unanswerably, and to everyone’s amazement she had won.

She also became Norman’s best friend.

“Leave where you are, lad,” she advised him. “Get a new agent, live somewhere different. You’re only twenty-eight years of age. Don’t wait until you’re seventy before you understand how to win in this old life.”

Norman had been sure she was going to be a well-meaning person who was going to put him on a diet and set him jogging. He was doubtful. He didn’t listen to her easily. Gradually, like a dripping tap, her words sank in. “Stop apologizing, stop joking, forget being the clown who laughs on the outside and cries under the makeup. Like yourself, lad, like yourself—others will take you at exactly the same value as you put on yourself.”

Norman hadn’t agreed. He hated people who thought too well of themselves. He always wanted to put down the kind of toffee-nosed person who thought they were God’s gift to the human race. Drip, drip of the tap—he believed Grace, and everything she told him seemed to work.

“You’re different, lad, you’re not like stuck-up people. You’re a fine boy—just let people know you are a fine, decent boy. Stop pretending to be some joke roly-poly without a brain in his head.”