Incarnate (29 page)

“Closer than you think. Can I come over?”

“Oh, you’re back! You know you can. I’m not going anywhere.” She added wryly, “I expect you’d guessed that already.”

Molly opened her door as he opened her gate. They hugged each other as the door closed, parted, and hugged again. “I’m glad you’re back,” “I’m glad I’m here” was all they needed to say for a while. Eventually they sat down. Molly gazed at his face. “Are you back because you’ve made peace with your father?”

He hadn’t wanted to talk about it so soon. “No,” he said.

“He’s all right though, isn’t he?”

“He’s alive, if that’s what you mean.”

“So it isn’t over,” she said, meaning to be encouraging.

“That’s right, it isn’t. It’s still happening in here.” He tapped his forehead so hard that it hurt. “What’s over is my chance of making peace.”

“Oh, Martin, why?”

“We seemed to be getting along for a while, and then we had a fight. Christ, two grown men. Nobody ever grows up. He got to saying I’d ruined Larry’s reputation by putting his name on that old film, Larry would be ashamed if he knew and that kind of crap, until I lost my temper. That’s one thing you can trust me to do,” he said bitterly. “I told him Larry went away because of the way he’d been treated.”

“Good for you.”

“Good for nothing. It isn’t the whole story. I never told you I had a fight with my father the night before Larry enlisted. I actually knocked him down, and don’t go thinking that achieved anything. All it did was make Larry go to Vietnam.”

“You can’t tell me your father wasn’t more to blame.”

“So what? I shouldn’t have said it to him. He’s dying, for Christ’s sake, and I couldn’t even leave him his memories.” He could still see his father’s face closing for good against him, whether from rage or from realizing Martin had spoken the truth. “And what the good Christ,” his father had asked in a soft voice that shook with hatred, “do I have to do to make sure
you
get out of my house and never come back?” Martin had caught the next flight to England. “Let’s not talk about it, Molly,” he said finally. “Tell me why you said you wouldn’t be going anywhere.”

“Oh, that? I’ve got myself suspended from work. Better than being hung up by your toes, anyway,” she said, with a grin that was almost convincing.

“Maybe I’ll be joining you. I need to call MTV.” The thought that neither of them might be working was oddly comforting. “But how did you manage to get yourself suspended?”

“It was that dream I told you about—told you some of it, anyway. It was more like a vision, it was so real. I thought I actually had been interrogated by the police and went and accused them of giving me the third degree. I think they would have, I think I foresaw it and managed to prevent it. I know this all sounds crazy.”

“Not to me, not when you say it.”

She smiled gratefully at him, then her smile drooped. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I’d just got myself suspended, but I implicated you, Martin, they said so. They thought I was trying to discredit them to protect you. They said they wouldn’t have suspected you except for what I did.”

“Hell, they must have said that to work on you. Come on, there’s no way they wouldn’t have suspected me. They can’t pin anything on me, you said so yourself.” He gazed at her until her smile ventured back, then he stood up. “Better get it over with.”

Gould’s secretary gave him an appointment for the next morning. Molly added to the chili con came she’d made for herself, and later they made love. During the night she began shouting and wouldn’t be shaken awake, though since she hadn’t seemed disturbed, he didn’t try very hard. At breakfast she demanded, “Was I talking in my sleep?”

“You certainly were.”

“What was I saying?”

“It sounded like ‘Randy Rankin the wanker.’ ”

“I
was
right.” She seemed delighted—by the inventiveness of her subconscious, he assumed. “Good luck,” she said, and kissed him as he went out beneath the gloomy, ambiguous sky.

A chill mist made Queensway and its dormant neon signs look dusty, shrank the park. Everyone at MTV seemed wary of him. Leon was still in Belfast, and Martin went straight up to Gould’s office.

Gould wasn’t alone in the leathery room. Another man stood up as he did, a lanky, supple man whose face was as neutral as Gould’s. “This is Superintendent Fellows,” Gould said.

The policeman questioned Martin at length. What was his purpose in coming to Britain? What was the intention behind his films? Who did he know in Britain? Surely he must know other film directors… . Eventually Fellows said, “Why should you have been sent the film?”

“I suppose because of my earlier work.”

“It certainly looks that way.” Fellows rearranged the fingers of the gloves that were draped over his knee. “As it would if it had been meant to.”

Gould intervened. “Surely the last person he’d have sent it to would have been himself.”

“That would be downright stupid, I agree.” Fellows stood up. “I gather you have a police record in America, Mr. Wallace. I’m frankly surprised you found it so easy to come here. That is all for now, but if you propose to leave the address in Kensington High Street, please let us know.”

Martin was damned if he was going to draw their attention to Molly’s address. “The only police record I have is from filming peace marches.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Gould ushered Fellows to the door then lowered himself into his own chair. “I’d better say at once that we aren’t happy with your work.”

Martin felt suddenly as unsure of himself as if he were just making his first film. “What don’t you like?”

“What
don’t
we like? Tell me what there is
to
like. We’re clearly in need of enlightenment. Seems to me you spend more time undermining other people’s programs than making your own.”

“I don’t think that’s quite fair.”

“Fair or not, you’d better take it seriously. The only filming you’ve done that could form the basis of a program is absolutely and completely unbroadcastable. Yes, I mean this discipline film of yours. Your tastes are your affair, but you’d better keep them off our screens, I’m warning you. Maybe you don’t know that pirate copies of your film are already circulating at the BBC. All we need now is for one to get into the hands of
Private Eye.”

Martin was stunned. “I’ll be filming again soon.” he said weakly. “We’re going into Parliament next week.”

“Parliament? Either you’re joking or you’re mad.” Gould’s face was still expressionless. “Why, you’ve already been there. You’ve been in Hansard. In case you don’t know what that is, it means there have been questions about you in the House, about why you were let into Britain at all. You won’t be filming Parliament, my friend, next week or ever. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve made it even less possible for anyone else to.”

Oddly, Martin found the loss of a subject almost reassuring. “I’m sorry. I wish I could suggest what I can do instead.”

“Aren’t you assuming you will still be working for us?”

“Won’t I be?” Martin said, not sure if he cared.

“On two conditions. We shall want to know in advance what you’re proposing to film, and you’ll need to submit draft scripts. It was always against my judgment that you were given such a free hand.”

“I’ve never worked that way,” Martin said, and realized that they might let him bring Molly with him. “If those are your conditions, I can try.”

“That’s one of them. The other is that you broadcast a statement that you were mistaken about the Bennett film, that it was fake from beginning to end. Nothing to be ashamed of. After all. it fooled his own mother.”

Martin remembered what Molly had said. “I can’t do that.”

“You can’t be serious. Go on then, astonish me, tell me why.”

“Because I don’t believe it’s true.”

“You mean you don’t believe it’s fake. Why?”

“I can’t say.”

“You can’t do all sorts of things, it seems to me. Well, you won’t be making films for us until you can.” He stood up, the trace of a pout on his round face. “I don’t want to see you here again until you’re ready to broadcast that retraction.”

On the way out Martin almost got past Ben Eccles. “Leaving us?” he said.

Martin was taken aback by how sudden and savage his anger was. “Looks that way,” he said, breathing hard and slow.

“Best news I’ve had all year. Here’s some to take with you to our mutual girl friend.” Martin turned and headed for the lifts, but Eccles was there first, covering the call button with one hand. “You tell her from me that she may have got to Tessa while I was out of the way, but she reckoned without me. We won’t be putting out anything about her friend and her old people’s center. Even if it were worth broadcasting, I wouldn’t touch anything that came from Molly Wolfe or from you either.” He took his hand away, leaving a sweaty handprint around the button, and Martin managed not to punch him in the face as he leaned close. “If either of you manages to fool anyone in the future,” he hissed, “it won’t be me.”

27

“
Q
UICK
, Geoffrey,” Joyce murmured through the bathroom door, “come and see.”

“Coming.” He struggled into his dressing gown as he unbolted the bathroom door. He wondered why he had taken to bolting it—the old lady never got out of bed unassisted. He went downstairs supporting himself to find Joyce.

He heard her voice, louder than the television interviewer’s, as he reached the hall. As he opened the door she switched off the television and turned to him, her face shining. “Oh, Geoffrey, you missed it. They let me say everything I wanted to. Millions of people must have heard me.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to see.”

“You’ve heard it all before. Haven’t you enough of me to put up with without watching it on the box?” She took his hands and looked so pleased he thought she was going to dance. “And all because I knew Molly Wolfe. Some good comes out of everything, Geoffrey. You don’t mind if I leave you to it now, do you? I must go and see those hamburger people at once.”

“You go and give them what for.”

He felt brighter as he climbed the stairs, though the overcast above the hill was blackening. He couldn’t be bothered clearing the steamy mirror to shave: his chin felt almost smooth, and besides, it wasn’t as though anyone was visiting today. He dressed in the bedroom and opened the curtains, he gazed at Hampstead Heath, which looked like spilled milk in which a few houses were swimming, and then he went into the old lady’s room.

She was sitting up in bed, her delicate hands at the ends of her balloonish arms interlaced on the shapeless quilted mound of her. “What was Joyce so pleased about?” she piped. “She said you’d tell me.”

“She was on television, talking about the day center. She says they let her say everything she wanted to,” he said smiling. “It’d take more than a reporter to interrupt Joyce.”

“I expect he might just as well not have been there.”

“Exactly.” He picked up her tray and tried not to look too closely at the contents of the plates: porridge that looked regurgitated, bread and butter marked with toothless crescents, a glass of milk down which porridge was dribbling. He scraped the plates into the kitchen bin and washed them, then he went back to her. “So it looks as if you’ll have a center soon,” he said.

“You’ll be pleased.” Either she was winking at him or her left eyelid was drooping; she had to make a visible effort to raise it again. “You’ll soon be rid of me.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Of course not, you’re a gentleman.” The other eye was closing, a slow ponderous blink as if the fat of her hairless eyebrow were forcing the eyelid down. “Stay and talk to me until I go to sleep if you can.” she said.

“Certainly I can.” He brought his chair from the office. “What shall I talk about?”

“Tell me how Joyce got on the telly.”

“Through a friend of hers. I don’t know her. A girl called Molly Wolfe.”

“The girl who was in the paper.”

“That’s right,” he said, surprised. “Joyce knew her years ago.”

“I like reunions. It’s nice to meet old friends. Here’s to more of them.”

“Reunions or old friends?”

“Reunions for Joyce. And for me too,” she piped.

He felt a twinge of hope. “You’ve lost touch with your friends?”

“Only for now. You see,” she said as if she were telling him something he already knew, “they’re starting to come back.”

It made him uneasy, the way conversations with her would slip awry like this, without warning. She was smiling at him as if nothing had happened, and for a moment he felt as though he was the one who was deluded—as though she was telling the truth and laughing at him behind her bland smile because she knew he would never believe her. That was dangerous nonsense. He oughtn’t to be trusted to look after her if he were going to start imagining that sort of thing. He was tired, that was all, more and more so and no wonder, what with looking after her as well as trying to do his job. “Who do you mean?” he said, hoping he had been unfair.

“The same ones as Joyce.”

Perhaps all her friends were dead and so she needed to imagine Joyce’s friends were hers. But no, of course: “You mean the other people Joyce was looking after.”

She gave him a girlish smile that looked almost mischievous, and sank back, crushing the pillows. “Who else could I mean?” She settled into her nest of pillows, her eyes closing. “Have you lost any friends?” she piped.

“A few, in the war.” Surely she hadn’t meant to imply that he didn’t know what losing friends was like. “Not so many yet,” he said, almost apologetically.

“You’ve still got Joyce.”

“That I have. When it comes right down to it, she’s the only friend I need.”

The sky was turning black. “Don’t put the light on,” she said when he stood up, and he sat down again. “Are you still in love with her?”

“Why, yes, of course,” he said. “Most certainly.”

“I expect she’s in all your best memories.”

“I expect so too,” Geoffrey said, feeling lulled by the growing dark.