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.
Nineteen
Angel Eyes. The first film in the Festival's Curds Wooife season and, to Tyre B'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
