Before She Met Me Read online

  And now, according to Barbara, their daughter wanted him to take her to a film. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t the slightest idea whether or not Alice had ever seen one before. She must have done, of course—unless her genetic inheritance in the area of aesthetics was abnormally domineering. But he didn’t actually know. This made him sad. Three years away and you didn’t know the simplest things. And then it made him sadder. Three years away and you didn’t even ask yourself whether or not you knew.

  But why did Alice want to go with him—and why to a re-run of a five-year-old British-made comedy flop at the Holloway Odeon?

  ‘Apparently there’s a scene in it which was filmed at her school,’ came Barbara’s offhand reply down the phone; his daughter’s request, as usual, was not being communicated to him directly. ‘All her friends are going.’

  ‘Can’t she go with them?’

  ‘I think she’s still a bit frightened of cinemas. I think she’d be happier with a grown-up.’ Not with you as you; just with you as a grown-up.

  Graham agreed; he usually did nowadays.

  When he got to the Odeon with Alice the wisdom of his two decades’ abstention was confirmed. The foyer smelt of softly frying onions, which patrons were encouraged to smear on hot dogs to ward off the chill of a warm July afternoon. Their tickets, he noted, cost as much as a shoulder of lamb. Inside, despite the scarcity of customers, the auditorium was murky with cigarette smoke. No doubt because the few who were there kept on lighting two cigarettes for themselves at the same time, in craven imitation of whatever that American film was that Graham had resolutely not seen.

  When the flick started (Graham used the limiting noun of his adolescence: ‘movie’ was American, and ‘film’ made him think of ‘film studies’), he remembered a lot more about why he didn’t like the cinema. People talked about the artificiality of opera; but had they ever looked at this stuff properly? Garish colours, ludicrous plot, 1880s music with a topping of Copland, and the moral complication of a copy of the Dandy. Of course, Over the Moon was probably a poor example of the genre; but then it was always bad art that one examined to get the clearest idea of the form’s basic conventions.

  Meanwhile, whoever thought that a comedy-thriller about a very fat burglar who kept getting stuck in coal-holes was a good idea? And who then topped it by coming up with a thin detective whose gammy leg made him run even more slowly than the fat burglar? Oh look, said Graham to himself as one of the chase-scenes was suddenly speeded up against a background of honky-tonk piano, they’ve discovered that technique. More dismaying still was the fact that the two dozen people in the audience—none of whom appeared to go to Alice’s school—seemed to be laughing quite genuinely. He felt his daughter tug on his sleeve.

  ‘Daddy, has something gone wrong with the film?’

  ‘Yes, darling, the projector’s on the blink,’ he replied; adding, when the scene finished, ‘It’s mended now.’

  From time to time he squinted across at Alice, fearful that she would be excited by the cinema—the child of teetotal parents swilling a tot of sweet sherry. Yet her face stayed expressionless except for a slight frown, which Graham knew was her way of registering contempt. He waited for the scene featuring her school, but much of the action was indoors; during one long-shot of a city which was meant to be Birmingham (but which Graham judged to be London) he thought he spotted a familiar building in the mid-distance.

  ‘Is that it?’

  But Alice merely frowned more fiercely, bullying her father into shamed silence.

  After about an hour, the trail of the obese housebreaker led the handicapped sleuth quite by chance to a much grander villain, an Italianate, lightly-moustached club-chair loller who acted contempt for the law by pulling slowly on a cheroot. The damaged detective at once started opening all the doors of the flat. In the bedroom he found Graham’s wife. She was wearing dark glasses and reading a book; the sheets were chastely swaddled round her breasts, but the implications of the rumpled bed were clear. No wonder the film received an A certificate.

  As the hero suddenly recognized an apparently well-known beauty queen, and as Graham recognized his viciously peroxided wife, she said, in a voice deep enough to be dubbed,

  ‘I don’t want any publicity.’

  Graham let out a violent chuckle, obliterating for himself the reply of the calipered gumshoe. He glanced across at Alice and noted the return of her shaming frown.

  During the two-minute scene that followed, Graham’s second wife acted in turn surprise, anger, contempt, doubt, puzzlement, contrition, panic and, a second time round, anger. It was the emotional equivalent of a speeded-up chase. She also had time to reach across towards the telephone on the bedside table, thus giving those among the twenty-six people in the Holloway Odeon whose vision was not diminished by smoking two cigarettes at the same time a brief glimpse of her bare shoulders. Then she vanished from the screen, as well, doubtless, as from the mind of every casting director who had been unable to avoid seeing the film.

  When they came out, Graham was still smiling to himself.

  ‘Was that it?’ he asked Alice.

  ‘Was what what?’ she replied with pedantic seriousness. At least she got something of her character from him.

  ‘Was that the school in that shot?’

  ‘What school?’

  ‘Your school, of course.’

  ‘What makes you think it was my school?’

  Ah. Uh-huh.

  ‘I thought that was why we went to the film, Alice: because you wanted to see your school.’

  ‘No.’ Again, a frown.

  ‘Haven’t all your friends been going to see it this week?’

  ‘No.’

  Ah well, no, of course not.

  ‘What did you think of the film?’

  ‘I thought it was a waste of time and money. It didn’t even go anywhere interesting, like Africa. The only funny bit was when the projector went wrong.’

  Fair enough. They got into Graham’s car and drove carefully up to Alice’s favourite teashop in Highgate. He knew it was Alice’s favourite, because in three years of taking her out on Sunday afternoons they’d tried every teashop in North London. As usual, they had chocolate eclairs. Graham ate with his fingers; Alice with a fork. Neither of them commented on this, nor on any of the other ways in which she was growing into a person marked off from the one she might have been if he hadn’t left home. Graham didn’t think it fair to mention such things, and hoped she didn’t notice them herself. She did notice every one of them, of course; but had been taught by Barbara that it was bad manners to point out other people’s bad manners to them.

  After dabbing her lips with a napkin—Don’t be a Human Blowpipe, her mother always said—she remarked neutrally,

  ‘Mummy told me you specially wanted to see that film.’

  ‘Oh, did she? Did she say why?’

  ‘She said you wanted to see Ann in one of … what was it … “her most convincing screen roles”, I think that’s what she said.’ Alice was looking at him solemnly. Graham felt cross; but there was no point in taking it out on Alice.

  ‘I think that might have been one of Mummy’s jokes,’ he said. One of her cleverer ones, too. ‘I tell you what. Why don’t we have a joke back on Mummy? Why don’t we say we tried to get in to Over the Moon, but it was packed out, so we had to go and see the new James Bond instead?’ He supposed there was a new James Bond; there usually seemed to be.

  ‘All right.’ Alice smiled, and Graham thought, She does take after me, yes she does. But maybe he only thought that when she agreed with him. They sipped at their tea for a while; then she said,

  ‘It wasn’t a very good film, was it, Daddy?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid it wasn’t.’ Another pause. Then he added, uncertainly, but sensing the question was being invited, ‘What did you think of Ann?’

  ‘I thought she was rubbish,’ Alice replied vehemently. She did take after Barbara; he’d got it wrong. ‘She was s
uch a … such a tart.’

  Graham, as always, concealed his reaction to her lexical discoveries.

  ‘She was only acting.’ But he sounded conciliatory rather than sage.

  ‘Well, I just think she did it too darn well.’

  Graham looked across at the open, pleasant, but still unformed face of his daughter. Which way would it jump, he wondered: into that odd combination of sharpness and pudginess he now associated with Barbara, or into a thoughtful, tolerant, mellow elongation? For her sake, he hoped she would resemble neither of her parents.

  They finished their tea, and Graham drove her even more slowly than usual back to Barbara’s house. That was how he thought of it nowadays. He used to think of it as their house; now it was just Barbara’s. And it didn’t even have the decency to look different. Graham felt resentful towards the house for not getting itself repainted or something, for not committing some act symbolic of its new, single ownership. But the house was clearly on Barbara’s side. It always had been, he supposed. Every week its sameness was intended to remind him of his … what, treachery?

  Perhaps; though Barbara’s sense of betrayal wasn’t as sharp as she let him continue to believe. She had always been a Marxist about emotions, believing that they shouldn’t just exist for themselves, but should do some work if they were to eat. Besides, she had for some years been more interested in her daughter and her house than in her husband. People expected her to cry thief, and she did so; but she didn’t always believe herself.

  It was the last Sunday of the month: as usual, Barbara let Alice slip in under her elbow and then handed Graham an envelope. It contained details of the month’s additional expenses for which she judged him liable. Occasionally it would be a bill for some reckless treat which Barbara held to be necessary if Alice was ever to overcome the unmappable hurt of Graham’s departure; the claim was unanswerable, his cheque wry.

  Graham stuffed the envelope into his pocket without comment. Normally he replied with another silently-accepted envelope the following Sunday. Queries were dealt with on Thursday evenings, when he rang up and was allowed to talk to Alice for between five and ten minutes, depending on her mother’s mood.

  ‘Enjoy the film?’ Barbara enquired levelly. She was looking neat and pretty, her tight dark curls newly washed. It was her going-out-and-having-a-good-time-and-stuff-you look; as opposed to her martyred-by-housework-and-being-a-single-parent-and-stuff-you look. Graham felt roughly the same indifference towards both guises. He felt a complacent lack of curiosity about why he had ever loved her in the first place. That black hair, inhumanly flawless in colour; that round, forgettable face; those guilt-inducing eyes.

  ‘Couldn’t get in,’ he replied, just as levelly. ‘It’s one of those cinemas they’ve split up into three, and I suppose all her schoolfriends had got there before us.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Oh, well, we thought, once we were there, we might as well see something, so we went to the new James Bond instead.’

  ‘What EVER for?’ Her tone was sharper, more rebuking than he could have predicted. ‘You’ll give the child nightmares. Really, Graham.’

  ‘I think she’s too sensible for that.’

  ‘Well, all I can say is, on your head be it. On your head.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, okay then. See you … talk to you on Thursday.’ He backed off the doorstep like a rebuffed brush salesman.

  Even the jokes turned sour with Barbara nowadays. She’d find out in due course that they hadn’t been to the Bond film—Alice would keep it up for a bit and then crack, in that rather solemn way of hers—but by then Barbara would be past seeing it as a simple revenge joke. Why did she always do this to him? Why did he always feel like this when driving away? Oh, stuff it, he thought. Stuff it.

  ‘Good visit?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Cost much?’ Ann wasn’t referring to the direct price of taking Alice out, but to the indirect one, the one in the sealed envelope. And perhaps to other indirect costs as well.

  ‘Haven’t looked.’ He tossed the monthly reckoning on to the coffee table unopened. He always felt depressed returning from the failed part of his life to the active one; that was inevitable, he supposed. And he always underestimated Barbara’s talent for making him feel like a bob-a-job boy: the envelope, he suspected, might as well contain his signed cub’s card, while even now his ex-wife would be putting up the ‘Job Done’ sticker with its big red tick.

  He went through to the kitchen, where Ann was already pouring him a half-and-half gin-and-tonic, her usual prescription for him at this time of the week.

  ‘Nearly caught you in flagrante,’ he said smilingly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Nearly caught you, today, in flagrante with the other fellow,’ he expatiated.

  ‘Ah. Which of them?’ She hadn’t located the joke yet.

  ‘That Eyetie fellow. Thin moustache, velvet smoking jacket, cheroot, glass of champagne in the hand—that one.’

  ‘Ah. That one.’ She was still puzzled. ‘Enrico or Antonio? They both have thin moustaches and swill champagne all the time.’

  ‘Riccardo.’

  ‘Oh, Riccardo.’ Come on, Graham, get to the point, she thought. Stop making me feel nervous.

  ‘Riccardo Devlin.’

  ‘Devlin … Christ, Dick Devlin. Oh, you don’t mean you saw Over the Moon? … God, wasn’t it awful? Wasn’t I awful?’

  ‘Just bad casting. And they didn’t have Faulkner on the script, did they?’

  ‘I sat there in bed, wearing ridiculous dark glasses, and said, “I don’t want any of this to come out”—or something like that. Star part.’

  ‘That might have been an improvement. No, it was, “I don’t want any publicity”.’

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t get any; quite right too. And I got punished for being a loose woman.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘What did you see that for? I thought you were going to some film with Alice’s school in.’

  ‘We were. Except that I doubt if such a film really exists. It was … well, I suppose it was one of Barbara’s jokes.’

  Fucking Barbara. ‘Fucking Barbara.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, love.’

  ‘No, really—fucking Barbara. You get three hours a week with that kid and that’s all, and she uses it to get back at me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think that was her motive.’ He didn’t mean it.

  ‘What else could it have been? She just wanted you to see me acting badly, and get you embarrassed in front of Alice. You know how suggestible kids are. Now Alice’ll just think of me as a screen whore.’

  ‘She’s much too sensible for that.’

  ‘No one is at her age. That’s what I look like in the film; that’s what she’ll think. “Daddy’s gone and married a scrubber,” she’ll say to her friends at school tomorrow. Your daddies are all married to your mummies, but my Daddy’s gone off and left Mummy and married a scrubber. I saw her on Sunday. A real scrubber.” ’ Ann mimicked girlish horror.

  ‘No she won’t. Shouldn’t think she knows the word anyway,’ Graham replied, without convincing himself.

  ‘Well, it’s bound to make an impact, isn’t it? Fucking Barbara,’ she repeated, this time as a summing-up.

  Graham still got a mild shock when he heard Ann swear. He always remembered the first time it had happened. They’d been walking along the Strand on a rainy evening, when all of a sudden she’d let go of his arm, stopped, looked down at the backs of her legs and said, ‘Fuck’. She (or, for all he knew, he) had splashed some dirty water on to her calf. Only one calf; that was all. It would wash out of her tights; it didn’t hurt; it was dark, so no one would notice; and they were at the end, not the beginning, of the evening. But even so, she had said ‘Fuck’. It had been a nice evening; they’d had a good dinner together, got on well, hadn’t run short of things to say; but even so, a couple of drops of water and it brought out a ‘Fuck’. What on earth would she
say if something serious happened? If she broke a leg or the Russians landed?

  Barbara had never sworn. Graham had never sworn when he was with Barbara. Nothing beyond ‘Damn’, anyway; except to himself. That evening, as he and Ann continued along the Strand, he enquired mildly,

  ‘What would you say if the Russians landed?’

  ‘Eh? Is that a threat or a promise?’

  ‘No, I mean, you just swore when you splashed your tights. I wondered what you’d say if you broke your leg or the Russians landed or something.’

  ‘Graham,’ she replied carefully, ‘I think I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.’

  They had walked on in silence for a bit.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m being priggish. I only wanted to know.’

  ‘Let’s say, perhaps you’ve led a rather sheltered life.’

  They had left it at that for the time being; and Graham couldn’t help noticing how, as he got closer to Ann, he began to swear more himself. At first hesitantly, then with relief, then with expansive relish. Now he swore automatically, as mere punctuation, like everyone else. He assumed that if and when the Russians came, then the right words would come too.

  ‘What was it like, making Over the Moon?’ he asked Ann as they were washing up together that evening.

  ‘Oh, a bit less fun than some. Lots of studio work. Low budget, so we all had to wear the same clothes a lot. I remember they chopped around the script and made several scenes happen on the same day, just so that we wouldn’t have too many changes.’

  ‘And how was your Italian inamorato?’

  ‘Dick Devlin? He was as English as the East End. Hasn’t exactly made it into lights so far, has he? In fact, I think I saw him doing a shaving commercial a few weeks ago. He was nice; not much talent, but nice. Couldn’t act, just used what he called his “glower power”. Took me bowling one afternoon when they didn’t need us. Bowling!’