Elegance and Innocence (48 page)

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had
,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad:

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme;

A bliss in proof and proved a very woe;

Before a joy proposed; behind a dream,

    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell
.

I look up at the place where Ellery King was standing; something of his aura lingers, hovering, glowing and vibrant, just above the grey carpet tiles near the door. For a moment I can almost smell the perfume of his tousled black hair and the warm heat of his tanned skin.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply.

Yes, we’ll definitely have to work on Sonnet 129.

‘You always go for the same type.’

My heart stops.

I know that voice.

But I never thought I’d hear it again.

My eyes shoot open.

There, in front of me, is Robbie, dunking one of R. Fitzroy’s precious organic camomile tea bags into her missing blue-and-white china cup and saucer. She cocks her blonde head to one side and smiles; she’s wearing the same orange jumper and faded jeans I saw her in the other
day. Only this time she’s closer … and speaking … and standing in a room full of other people …

All the air seems to have been sucked from my lungs; in fact, from my entire body. I cannot breathe.

‘What are you doing here?’ I clutch the armrest of the sofa for support.

‘Pardon me,’ a man slips between Robbie and one of the Ikea chairs, making his way towards the kitchen.

‘Of course.’ She moves to one side so he can pass.

‘Oh, my God! People can see you!’ I hiss, covering my face with my hands. They’re shaking violently. ‘Jesus, Robbie! What are you doing? Get out of here!
Hide
!’

‘OK, you need to calm down.’ She lowers her voice. ‘You’re actually starting to make a scene.’

‘No, no! Just … just disappear again on … oh, God!’ I press my eyes shut. ‘I’m going to be sick! Please go away,
please
!’

Instead, she sits across from me, calmly pressing her tea bag against the side of the cup with her spoon. ‘Oh, that’s very nice! Whatever happened to “Hi, Robbie! Nice to see you! How have you been?” Manners, Evie.’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘What’s the world coming to, eh? Kids today!’

This isn’t happening to me. She’s in front of me; solid, real, her skin glowing with the warmth of life.

‘You’re dead,’ I say, as if trying to convince myself.

She sips her tea. ‘Just a little bit.’

There’s a long pause. We stare at each other.

She giggles.

‘No, Robbie. You’re
dead
!’ I repeat accusingly. Perhaps if I say it convincingly enough, she’ll disappear.

‘OK, you’ve got me.’ She sighs, putting down her tea and holding up her hands. ‘I’m dead! Forgive me, but I’m a little touchy about the subject. Especially as you’re alive, you have a beautiful son, you’re sitting here in this hell-hole farting around, lusting after that creep when you could be having a rich and fulfilling life … As I said, I’m a little touchy about the whole thing!’

I frown at her, offended. ‘What do you mean “farting around”? Who are you to tell me how to live my life?’

She looks at me, hard. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Who am I? Well, I’m the dead person who’s come back from the underworld with the express purpose of telling you that you’re wasting your time.’ She takes another sip. ‘How’s that? Does that answer your question?’

‘Underworld?’ It sounds so ancient. ‘Whatever happened to heaven and hell?’

She shrugs her shoulders. ‘We call it the underworld but really it’s more like Grand Central Station on a warm spring night. A lot of milling about … departures, arrivals … that sort of thing. It’s hard to explain. Heaven and hell are for amateurs. You know, I think this whole organic thing’s just a load of hype. I can’t taste the difference, can you? It’s just like pee in a cup.’

I don’t know what to say.

It’s all so ordinary and mundane. Here we are in broad daylight. I have coffee mouth. She smells like cigarettes and Chanel No. 5. There’s a guy at the sink behind us washing up cups and humming the theme tune to
Hawaii Five-O
. This is not a haunting. This is not the grand collision of life and death. And, most of all, this is not happening to me.

I sit there, shaking my head and blinking at her. I really don’t know what to do with this information. Or how I’m going to get past this episode and live my life like a normal person ever again.

‘You’re really weirded out, aren’t you?’ Her voice is surprisingly sympathetic.

I nod, incapable of forming a coherent sentence and unwilling to speak out loud, as if the sound of my own voice in conversation with hers is a kind of collusion, enmeshing me further in this whole bizarre, untenable scenario.

But despite my silence, she remains; crossing and recrossing her legs, drumming her fingers against the armrest; biting her nails. She never could sit still for five minutes.

The guy behind us finishes the washing up and moves on to a medley of Bernstein tunes, starting with ‘I Feel Pretty’.

And I’m fairly confident I’m going mad.

After a while, she stands up. ‘I have an idea.’ She holds
out her hand and then, after registering my obvious horror at the idea of touching her, places it very deliberately behind her back. ‘There’s no need to be like that.’ She sounds hurt. ‘I didn’t come all this way to harm you, Evie. As a matter of fact, it takes a hell of a lot of energy to be here at all.’

That’s when it strikes me; it’s still Robbie. Dead or alive. Above everything, beyond everything – it’s still just Robbie. She hasn’t really changed. She’s still all mouth, and miles of front – the same girl who died because she couldn’t get through the day without at least a litre of Diet Coke.

I’m ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter. And, for the first time, I look her in the eye.

Yes, it’s her.

But there is something different. A light, or rather, a radiance shining through her, as if, despite her apparent solidity, she’s translucent after all. But (and this is the odd thing) she’s not
unusually
translucent. And I have the fleeting realization that we might all be equally as transparent, if only we could see ourselves properly.

‘Let’s go for a walk.’ The air around her is still, oddly peaceful. ‘I have some things I’d like to tell you.’

‘If you’re going to do this, you need to do it right. Understand?’

It’s ten past seven on a Thursday evening. Robbie and I are the only students left in the building. Outside the sky is an inky, flat black and a slim sliver of moon is beginning to rise. The fluorescent lights glow eerily, blinking and buzzing above our heads.

I press my face into my hands.

There’s a knock on the studio door and a disgruntled cleaner pokes her head round the corner.

‘Five more minutes,’ Robbie begs, flashing her most appealing smile. The woman shakes her head, mumbles under her breath, but leaves us in peace.

Or what would be peace, if Robbie weren’t holding me hostage. It’s late; we’ve been here since our first class started at nine this morning and I’m tired and sweaty, and in desperate need of one of Mrs Van Patterson’s forbidden baths.

I lift my head. ‘We ought to get back,’ I say.

But Robbie doesn’t budge.

‘Trust me on this, Evie. You only get one shot. And in ten minutes the whole thing will be over and you’ll be back out in the waiting room with about a hundred other people staring at you. And they’ll only call back five of them. Only five!’

I’ve heard this statistic before. In fact, I’ve heard the whole speech before. Many, many,
many
times.

‘Every little thing you do has to be perfect.’ She’s oblivious to my rolling eyes. ‘And I can’t put my finger on it, but somethings not quite right …’

This isn’t what I want to hear.

I never asked her to help me; she just woke up one morning and appointed herself in charge of my Juilliard audition speeches. And, for three weeks now, all we’ve done is gone over them and over them, again and again and again. At breakfast, walking to the tube station, over lunch, walking back from the tube station, at dinner …

At first I was flattered. That wore off a while ago.

I’ve never met anyone so determined.

Or so irritating.

Right now she’s in what Imo calls her
Great Dictator
mode; her hair’s pulled back from her face and she’s wearing a pair of thick-framed reading glasses. (Imo and I strongly suspect they’re fake.) She’s holding a play text of
King Lear
in one hand and a copy of David Mamet’s
Sexual Perversity in Chicago
in the other, scrutinizing them; looking for clues. Finally she shakes her head. ‘Let’s go over everything one more time.’

That’s it. I’ve had enough.

‘No, Robbie. I’ve done them about fifty times already tonight. I’m finished.’ Dragging my aching limbs across the room, I retrieve my coat and bag. ‘I want to go home now. Come on.’

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ She hasn’t moved and doesn’t give the impression she’s likely to. Removing her faux glasses, she regards me severely – her impression of a grade-school librarian. ‘You have one little window of
opportunity to change your entire life here; one chance to guarantee that you’ll never have to go back to Ohio again except in a blaze of glory! And what? You’re pissed off because you may have to work for it? That it may involve a bit of effort on your part?’

Robbie’s the last person to lecture me on the importance of dedicated effort. Just because she’s decided to show up for class on time, she suddenly thinks she’s Lee Strasberg. ‘Don’t talk to me about hard work, Robbie! I’ve been slaving like a dog learning those pieces!’

She stands up. ‘And I’m telling you to do them again!’

‘Why?’ I throw down my bag and coat. ‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘They’re just not good enough, Evie! I’m … I’m not sure why, exactly, but they’re just not strong enough. As a matter of fact’ – she pauses, looking at the texts with a baffled expression on her face – ‘I still think they’re the wrong pieces for you. Boyd and I were talking about them the other day …’

‘
Boyd?
’

She smiles coyly. ‘Yeah, we were having a coffee together and I told him about your pieces …’

‘You met him for a coffee? Alone?’ I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

She sighs dramatically. ‘Listen, it’s just a coffee! We get on, OK? Anyway, I brought up that Fassbinder piece about a masturbating model and then he thought maybe if you
did Isabella from
Measure for Measure
it would be a fantastic whore/nun contrast thing …’

‘You know I don’t like that piece! I told you I don’t want to do it!’

‘But Evie, you’re missing an important opportunity here! Like I said, you only get one shot …’

Her mouth is moving. I can hear the words but nothing’s registering any more. I’m sick of the sound of her voice. Of her corrections, questions, stopping and starting me, bossing me around just because she did an audition once in her life … I can’t believe she’s seducing Boyd! For some reason it’s the last straw; a betrayal of something important and sacred. And now she wants me to change all my pieces so she can impress him.

That’s it. I pick my stuff up again.

‘You want strong? Well, fuck you, Robbie! I’ve had enough of your bullshit! It would be nice if, just once, you were enthusiastic and supportive instead pulling me to shreds day and night! It will never be good enough for you! And you know why? Because you don’t want me to succeed! You don’t want me to get into a place that turned you down!’

She looks stunned. ‘That isn’t true!’

‘Next time, save yourself the trouble: buy a glove puppet. Then you can stick your hand up its ass and make it do as you please!’

I slam the door behind me.

The cleaner’s there, leaning against the wall, smoking a fag.

She turns away.

I walk up the stairs alone.

For the first time in my life I’ve answered back. I’m not used to the rush of adrenalin and nerves. As I clutch the handrail, my hands are shaking.

This is a really bad night to be having a dinner party.

As soon as I walk in the door of Gloucester Place, Imo comes staggering out of the front room on a pair of Robbie’s black stilettos.

‘Shit! Evie! Where have you guys been? It’s quarter to eight! They’re going to be here in half an hour!’

I stop.

Her face is a primary-school colour wheel; streaks of blue eye shadow, circles of pink blush, red lipstick, applied with all the skill of a child who can’t draw inside the lines yet. Her hair’s in a tight bun with a little curlicue wisp on either side of her face; the epitome of chic circa 1974.That, along with Robbie’s slightly too large high heels and her very best
Little House on the Prairie
dress, complete the impression: she’s a little girl playing dress-up in Mommy’s things.

It’s cruel to let her make a fool of herself. How do I break the news that she looks ridiculous? The evening’s been arranged so she finally has an opportunity to seduce Lindsay Crufts with her beauty and sophisticated sex appeal.
That, and an enormous quantity of cheap wine. But unless he’s even more curiously orientated than we think, all her hard work will be wasted.