– they always come first, whether you want to sleep with them or not. How do you think that makes me feel?’
There was no answer to that. Acting was his life, his work and his play and, if he were honest, his only love; without it, he cared about nothing. Aware of the sadness his silence was causing but too selfishly honest to lie, Terry walked past his lover to dress for the theatre.
By the time Lewis Fleming arrived, the nursing home was almost always in darkness. He walked quietly down sour-smelling corridors which opened onto uniform rooms, nodding to nurses who tip-toed across polished floors and conscious of sleepless eyes watching him pass, glad of any focus to distract them from the darkness and loneliness to which evening abandoned them. For the ill and the desperate – and this plain red-brick building on Gray’s Inn Road was the last haven of hope for both – night was the hardest time and sleep the most elusive companion, so he went to cushion her from that hell, sitting wide awake by her bed and letting her sleep safely in the knowledge that, for a few hours at least, she was not alone. Resting on the stark white sheets, her hand felt cool in his.
Surrounded by the murmurs and the restlessness which reached him through paper-thin walls, Fleming had plenty of time to worry about what would happen if he could not manage to support his wife through her illness. Acting was a precarious way to make a living; he had been lucky to land a part in a play which had run for over a year, but it was coming to an end now and his future was uncertain. As the clock across the road struck the hour and then the half, he felt as though his life were passing twice as slowly as everybody else’s, while hers threatened to be over so soon. Pain 62
had begun to leave lines around her eyes that even sleep could not entirely smooth away, but she still looked young compared to the home’s other inhabitants, who had at least reached the vulnerable middle-age on which this unforgiving disease fed. Her face still held its beauty and its strength, and the blankets did much to belie the wasting of her body but, as he looked at her arms which were the colour of unbleached wax and tellingly thin, he was overwhelmed by the bitter sense of injustice that had been with him since the day the cancer was diagnosed. He remembered the mixture of courage and terror with which she had told him the news, and the stubborn disbelief with which he had received it. Could that really have been only three months ago?
At the first grey streak of dawn, when the rooms began to stir into life, he would kiss her gently awake as she had made him promise to do and slip away from her bed, past the seared faces and broken lives and down the steps into the street. A twenty-minute walk took him home, where he would fall exhausted into their bed and sleep until early afternoon; by three o’clock, he was back for the more conventional visiting period, and took his place among the ranks of husbands and wives armed with flowers, practised cheerfulness and carefully rehearsed homecoming plans, and with a resolve which crumpled the moment the visitor was out of reach of the searching eyes in the bed. On matinee days, he was spared this collective ritual and dared not go home, either, for fear that he would sleep through the afternoon and on into the night. He knew that his exhaustion was affecting his performance – Aubrey had already made that clear – but he had told no one of his situation, terrified that his livelihood would be taken away from him, and with it that thin sliver of hope that he could get them through this, that money could buy time, perhaps even a cure. The doctors had said it was not out of the question: that small chance and his wife’s constant faith in him were the only things that kept him on his feet.
On Thursdays and Saturdays, he crawled gratefully into an eating-house near the theatre, using its smoky fug to shake off the scent of flowers and drugs and pity that hung perpetually around him. He drank endless mugs of strong, hot coffee in the 63
hope that it would see him through two performances on stage and a third at his wife’s bedside, but ate little, conscious that every penny had to be saved. Today, as usual, the room was full of people for whom every shilling counted, but a woman at the next table stood out from the crowd, not least because she looked as tired and as worried as he felt. She was familiar to him from the theatre, and he had noticed her in particular because she reminded him of his wife. She looked up as the waitress removed an empty cup from her table and glanced in his direction, offering a half-smile of recognition. Embarrassed at having been caught watching her so intently, he returned the greeting in kind and quickly finished his coffee.
It was still raining when he left the eating-house to make his way to the theatre. During the lunch-time period on a Saturday, the area between Charing Cross and St Martin’s Lane was invariably full of itinerant young actors heading towards performances in which they enjoyed varying degrees of success, and he nodded to a few of the usual faces as he passed. Then, across the street, he saw Terry emerge from the saddlery shop which occupied the same building as his flat and walk quickly off in the direction of the New. A few seconds later another man, whom Lewis recognised as the actor’s latest lover, followed in his footsteps, catching him easily with just a few long strides. He grabbed Terry by the arm and the two seemed to argue for a minute before, in a display of affection which was foolhardy in such a public place, the taller man grabbed a flower from a stall and thrust it melodramatically towards Terry, who could not help but laugh. The tension between them fell away instantly, and Terry continued his journey alone, the flower now adorning his buttonhole.
Fleming felt a sudden stab of anger that God should allow these people to parade their filthy, fickle love in the street while seeming to punish him and his wife for their devotion. If he were to lose the only woman he had ever spoken to of love, the only woman he had taken to his bed, he knew he could never replace her with another.
In that instant, he felt vindicated for the decision he had taken during one of those long nocturnal vigils, a decision which went 64
entirely against his character – or at least what his character had once been. Cancer had a habit of eroding morally as well as physically, and everything he loved was under threat. He should not be ashamed of his actions. After all, what had he left to lose?
The dressing room smelt of scent and an electric fire. Outside, a steady stream of traffic passed along the corridor and, whenever the door opened, Lydia could hear the muffled tramp of scene shifters up above and catch a faint whiff of size from the paint dock. Apart from a small chintz sofa, its extent carefully chosen to limit the number of admirers who could be comfortably accommodated at any one sitting, the room contained very little unnecessary furniture but, after fourteen months of occupation, it felt as much like home as her rented lodgings down the road. However perfectly she rehearsed the lines about professional challenges and resisting complacency, no actress was immune to the advantages of a long run: praise and financial security were its obvious accessories, but just as valuable was the sense of belonging. In becoming someone else for more than six weeks at a time, she had discovered that she was also better at being herself.
The layers of familiarity had built up gradually during the many hours spent at the New, manifesting themselves in hundreds of letters and personal items which formed a living scrapbook of the present moment, a flamboyant index of everything that was most precious in her life. One wall was now completely covered in press cuttings, in pages from
Her dressing table was reserved for more intimate things: pictures of her father at the height of his musical career before it was 65
ruined by illness and depression; long and loving letters from her mother, with whom she corresponded weekly; and a rare photograph of Marta, taken on a bracing Sunday walk through Regent’s Park not long after they had met. Her normally camera-shy lover looked out from the picture through tears of laughter, much to the astonishment of a young man who stood in the background of the photograph, watching as Marta tried and failed not to be amused by the misfortunes of an elderly couple who had
