Living Proof (11 page)

For Prank, whose childhood had been spent in castoffs and hand-me-downs and who had stolen his first quarter at age five, it was eloquent testimony to what made his country great. The ordinary American's ability to make entrepreneurial capital in the face of any adversity.

Tyrell had insisted on living as close to the centre of the city as his and his wife's combined salaries would allow. After all, he had reasoned, the one thing we don't want to add to my already antisocial hours is a lot of unnecessary travelling time, right? And Susan Tyrell had nodded agreement and said nothing about the fact that buying a house where her husband was suggesting would give her a forty-five-minute drive each way to the comprehensive where she taught.

Besides, she had liked the house: substantial, large without being sprawling, one of those late-Victorian family homes near the Arboretum which she and David had redecorated and were steadily filling with books and videos instead of children.

Another of those decisions that Tyrell had talked her into with his usual mixture of enthusiasm and dodgy rationalisation. She had, Susan knew, allowed it to happen too often, agreed to far too much for too long and in 96 favour of what? A quiet life, contentment? When most of their friends were already into their second divorce or separation, what was she trying to prove? That she was a survivor? That, despite all the odds, she and David still loved one another, that they had found a way of making it work?

The first time she had spoken to him, really spoken, had been after a seminar at the University of Warwick, where they were both doing Media Studies. The only one of the group not majoring in Film, Susan had sat there for eight weeks, listening, contributing very little.

Finally, she had plucked up her courage and launched into a mild attack on the film they had been watching, a fifties musical called It's Always Fair Weather. Pretty enough, she had said, but pretty vacant. Fun, but why all the fuss? David had told her in no uncertain terms and after twenty minutes she had bowed her head and agreed with him and a pattern had been set.

On the way out of the seminar, he had invited her for coffee; in the coffee bar he had invited her to a movie. The movie turned out to be two, an Elvis Presley double bill, and David had made them sit on the front row. King Creole was okay, he pronounced, but the really interesting one was Change of Habit, Presley's last feature, 1969.

And Susan had kept her thoughts to her popcorn, watching Dr Elvis falling sanctimoniously in love with a speech therapist she had only later identified as Mary Tyler Moore.

"Didn't you think it was great," Tyrell had enthused later, 'the way our sense of Presley as star bifurcates the diegesis of the narrative? "

"Um," Susan had said.

"Yes. Absolutely."

She looked up now from the pile of books she was marking, hearing the front door open and Tyrell's voice calling her name from the hall.

"Susan, you there?"

She would, he thought, be in the long kitchen which doubled as dining room, marking another thirty-three pastiches of EastEnders, ever ready to pop another frozen pizza into the microwave.

"My God! You won't believe what happened, in the middle of the day, broad daylight. Must have been like that scene in Carrie, the one with the pig's blood, you know."

Susan was on her feet, filling the kettle.

"I heard about it on the car radio."

National? "

"No, Radio Nottingham."

"Oh," Tyrell sounded disappointed, ferreting in the cupboard for what was left of the packet of custard creams.

"I thought at least we might've got some good publicity out of it."

"I wonder if she felt the same? The woman what's her name?"

"Come on, Susan. Cathy Jordan, how many more times? You'll meet her tonight at Sonny's."

"I'm not sure if I'm going."

"What? Don't be ridiculous, of course you're going."

"I don't know, I think I'm getting a headache. I've got all this work to do."

Tyrell swore as the last biscuit crumbled between his fingers and fell to the floor.

"Susan, it's all booked. Arranged. Besides, you want to meet everybody, don't you?"

"Do I?"

"Of course you do. You'll have a great time once you're there, you always do."

Susan reached for the tea bags.

"Earl Grey or ordinary?"

"Ordinary."

What Susan could remember was sitting at one end of the table, drinking glass after glass of Perrier while the conversation spun around her.

Tyrell smiled. He had found a cache of plain chocolate 98 digestives.

"I don't want to go without you, you know that Still, if you've really got your mind made up..."

When she looked at him, what Susan saw was relief in his eyes; he would be so much happier not having to bother about her.

"Yes," she said, pouring boiling water into the pot, 'you go on your own. "

Tyrell shrugged and sat down at the pine table, reaching for the Guardian. First chance he'd had to look at the paper that day.

FR1;Nineteen Angel Eyes. The first film in the Festival's Curds Wooife season and, to TyreB's mind, the best. Made in 'forty-five for Republic, and photographed by John Alton, it featured Albert Dekker as a middle-aged businessman lured to destruction by slinky, wide-eyed Martha Mac Vicar who, a year later, her name changed to Martha Vickers, would come to brief fame as Lauren Bacall's thumb-sucking, promiscuous sister in the film of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

Wooife, who collaborated on the script with an uncredited Steve Fisher, persuaded

"Wild Bill' Elliott, a Western star under contract to the studio, to shed his buckskins and play the honest cop who investigates Dekker's murder and almost falls for Mac Vicar wiles himself.

Despite the film being almost unknown, Mollie had garnered enough publicity around Curtis Wooife's reemergence to ensure a three-quarter-full house. Wooife had limited his spirits intake to a half-bottle of vodka and rather less of gin. The plan was for Tyrell to introduce him briefly to the audience before the screening and invite anyone who wished to remain behind for a question-and- answer session at the end.

As the house lights dimmed and the stage spot nicked on, Tyrell dabbed sweaty palms against the sides of his black suit and with a whispered,

"Let's go to work," set out down the sloping aisle towards the microphone.

At about the same time that Tyrell was introducing Curds 100 Wooife, Peter Farleigh was stepping out of the shower and sipping the Dewar's and ginger ale he had poured for himself earlier. A little something from the mini-bar to set him up for the evening. And why not? Whatever he was about to treat himself to, Farleigh thought that he deserved it. He had had a good day. Now it was a few drinks in the bar, a meal and then he'd see. But one thing was certain, even if he ended the night back in his hotel room watching a Channel Four documentary about Tibet, it was preferable to driving the relatively short distance home; better than enduring Sarah's pained indifference and cold back.

Even before his seven-thirty alarm call that morning, he had been wide awake, eager to go. Telegraph and Mail delivered to his room, he had browsed the front pages between buffing his shoes and shaving, the sports and financial sections he had read over breakfast the full English as usual when he was travelling, but careful to use sunflower spread instead of butter, pour skimmed milk into his coffee, half a spoonful of sugar, no more. Time to telephone his wife before leaving, remind her the Volvo had to be taken in for service; maybe she could check the wardrobe, see if any of his suits needed dropping off at the cleaner's while he was in town.

His hire car was a new Granada, almost pristine, one of the perks of the job. His first meeting, at Epperstone Nurseries, had been over by lunchtime. Oh, there'd been one or two potentially dodgy questions about increased resistance to the new systematic fungicide he was pushing, but that was what he was paid to deal with. A few fancy charts prepared by the research department, a joke about not going back to the bad old days of mercury pollution, and they had been falling over themselves to sign on the dotted line.

Farleigh had Joined them for a swift half in their local before driving to a little place he favoured just this side of Loughborough; very nice smoked mackerel with gooseberry sauce. By twenty past two, he had been steering the Granada into the car park at the University School of Agriculture, Sutton Bonington.

Whenever people asked his line of work, more often than not he would temper sales executive with a wink and a self-deprecating smile: fifteen years in fertilisers, best make sure you're sitting downwind.

He had been back in the city by six and by seven had written up his sales reports, called his secretary on her home number and checked his appointments for tomorrow, thought about phoning his wife got halfway through dialling the number before deciding against it.

One of the things he couldn't stand, men who behaved as if they were on some kind of leash.

Peter Farleigh sucked in his stomach beneath the hotel towel, made a fist to circle steam from the mirror and leaned forward to examine his face; he could leave shaving till morning. A splash of aftershave would do.

Dry, he put on clean socks, underpants and shirt, the same suit and tie. In the lounge bar, he ordered a G & T, evinced enough of an interest in the forthcoming test series to have the waist coated barman smiling, tipped in the rest of his tonic and carried his glass over to a table near the smoked-glass window. Blurs of light passed along the street outside, trailing orange smoke.

When Farleigh turned his head, she was sitting across from him, relaxed into one of the easy chairs near the piano, leaning back.

Black dress, dark hair curling away from the nape of her neck.

Thirty? Thirty-three? He watched as she bent forward to pick up her bag, the way the button-through dress eased itself a little higher above her knees when she sat back. Oblivious to anyone around her, the woman tapped a cigarette from the pack, clicked her lighter, no response, gave it a shake and tried again, 102 finally dropped the lighter back inside her bag and began rummaging for a match.

"Here," Farleigh said, walking towards her.

"Allow me."

"Thanks." Perfume, red nails matching the dark of her lipstick; smoke that moved soft across her face.

"Staying here at the hotel?"

Shaking her head, she smiled.

"No. I'm meeting a friend."

Back at his seat, Farleigh thumbed through the menu, vacillating between the steak and the salmon. A light- toned Afro-Caribbean sat down at the piano and almost immediately began with

"Over the Rainbow', sleeves of his lightweight cream jacket pushed high above his wrists. For some moments, Farleigh was nagged by the thought that he had missed his daughter's birthday; once they were off at university, it was so difficult to keep tabs. At the edge of his vision, the woman shifted her position casually, leaning forward to the ashtray and back, crossing and recrossing her legs.

If she looks at me when I get up, Farleigh thought, I'll speak to her again. Instead, her head was turned towards the pianist, who had eased the microphone over the keyboard and was lightly crooning, The and Mrs Jones'. For God's sake, Farleigh told himself, stop being so bloody pathetic!

In the dining room, he decided fish twice in one day wasn't a good idea and ordered the steak. One bite and he knew that hadn't been a good idea either.

"Everything satisfactory, sir?"

"Fine, thank you."

As compensation, he sent back his glass of house red and ordered a bottle of good Bordeaux. Before now he'd paid the earth for stuff that tasted more like the copper sulphate fungicide known to the trade his trade as Bordeaux Mixture, but this was the real thing.

By the time he had risen to his feet, one bottle later, his head was slightly muzzy and it had taken him a while to realise that the dark-haired woman from the bar was now sitting at a corner table of the restaurant, evidently still alone.

That's all right, Farieigh lectured himself, keep on walking; couple of phone calls, early night Just as long as she doesn't look up. But it hadn't even taken that The woman was surprised when Farieigh stopped beside her table.

"At least you made the right choice," he said, nodding towards her plate.

I'm sorry? "

"The salmon. I had the steak. Like the proverbial, I'm afraid."

"The proverbial what?" There was just a hint of lipstick, dark against the white of her teeth.

Old boots. "

Farieigh smiled and she smiled back with her eyes; she was older, he decided, than he had first thought, but not by too much. Still the right side of forty.

It was never an issue," she was saying.

"The steak. I'm vegetarian."

Ah. "

All that stuff they pump into the poor animals, mad cow disease and everything. " She smiled, more fully this time.

"Perhaps you think that's foolish?"

Not at all. " Things I could tell you, he was thinking, put you off your food for a lifetime.

"What happened?" he asked, indicating the empty chair.

Vaguely, she waved a hand.

"Oh, you know..."

"It's difficult to imagine."

"What's that?"

"Anyone standing you up."

He had hoped for some response, a laugh, an explanation. Instead, she looked down at her plate and pushed at a piece of pink flesh with the edge of her fork. Farieigh knew he had blown it.

"Well, enjoy the rest of your meal."

104 She waited until he had almost turned away.

"Why don't you sit down?

Join me for a drink. "

Twenty Curtis Woolfe's film had been well received. Of course, there were always those who wanted nothing more than the latest glossy mishmash of unarmed combat and special effects, and who found anything pre-seventies slow and dull and boring.

"Nothing happens," they would say, mooching down to the bar for their designer lager. Nothing happens. Well, nobody's head came off, nobody's blood spurted a perfect technicolour parabola across the screen, nobody humped naked in the shower or the kitchen sink; there was no Chuck, or Steven, or Cynthia, no Jean Claude, Arnie, or Sly; not even (the heavens forfend) Bruce Willis. But the moment when Albert Dekker steps into the darkness of his hotel room, twists the key in the lock behind him, slides the bolt and turns back into the room to see Martha Mac Vicar feral face illuminated through the slanting blinds by the light across the street, still had most of the audience catching its breath. The smile that died in her eyes as her teeth bit down into her lower lip.