ALSO BY ANTHONY QUINN

The Rescue Man

Half of the Human Race

The Streets

Curtain Call

Freya

ANTHONY QUINN

Eureka

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Epub ISBN: 9781473524576

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Jonathan Cape

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

Jonathan Cape is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright © Anthony Quinn 2017

Anthony Quinn has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Jonathan Cape in 2017

First published in London by Vintage in 2017

penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The song ‘Surabaya Johnny’ is from the musical Happy End, written by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Bertolt Brecht

The lyrics from the song ‘This Bitter Earth’ are by Clyde Lovern Otis

1

EUREKA!

Nat had been staring at the word for an age. He had typed it upon sitting down first thing this morning, and it had squatted there at the top of the page, alone and unbudging, ever since. Eureka. From the Greek, I have found it. The irony of that wasn’t lost on him. Not only had he not found it, he barely knew where to start looking. And yet the word had seemed to him such a promising one, bristling with scholarly pride, an intellectual yahoo. Eureka. He must have first heard it, like everyone else, at school: Archimedes seeing the water rise as he lowered himself into his bath and suddenly understanding that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged, which in turn would solve the problem of measuring the volume of irregular objects. ‘Eureka!’ he supposedly cried. Or, as the class wag had translated it: ‘This bath water’s too bloody hot.’

For want of something else, he typed:

A screenplay by Nathaniel Fane

Nat had once been an instinctive writer, and trusted his gift to the extent that he could simply turn up at his desk in the morning and start clattering away, his fingers a blur over the typewriter. The reassuring metallic rat-a-tat-tat of the keys would carry him through to lunch, and even if he didn’t get it right straight away – who on earth did? – the words kept pouring out of him. By the end of the day he would have ten or twelve pages of dialogue. Now every tall white sheet of A4 loomed like an Everest.

He had written his first screenplay eight years earlier, a racy romantic comedy called The Hot Number, which had won him an Academy Award. His name, already well known in British drama, became a fixture in showbiz gossip columns. Film producers sought him out; society people fawned over him. ‘Nat Fame’, the rhyme he had cultivated from youth, had become his cherished sobriquet.

Early success proved, as it so often does, a false friend. He had written a number of screenplays since; only two of them had been produced. The last one, Square in the Circle, was strafed by villainously bad reviews, and went up in flames. He was paid, of course, but it didn’t much salve his pride. Nor did it keep his name where he wanted it, front and centre in the public consciousness. His latest enterprise was to adapt for the screen a story by Henry James. The immediate task had been to find a new title – the producers had what they called a problem with The Figure in the Carpet. There wasn’t much support for the word ‘figure’. And they all hated ‘carpet’. When he proposed Eureka they didn’t seem very enthused by that, either. A Greek what? asked Berk Cosenza, the moneyman from New York. Nat was in a room of blank-faced executives; only when he half recalled an account of some king using the eureka theory to determine the purity of gold in his crown did Berk lift his head and squint in his direction. Gold? he said. Nat wasn’t sure of the details, but having caught the scent of interest he quickly pressed his tiny sponge of information for all it was worth.

It had nearly run dry when Berk began to nod his head. He held up his palms straight and spread an imaginary line through the air. ‘Eureka,’ he said. A couple of others echoed the word in cautious approval. Nat, wise to the shifting currents of favour, returned an expression intended to suggest that this stroke of inspiration was entirely down to Berk’s genius. He had got his title.

And two weeks later that was all he had got. He rose from his desk, yawned and lit a cigarette, standing in the wonky parallelogram of sunlight laid across the carpet. From his window he could see the parapet of the Royal Academy, his next-door neighbour. Nat had lived at Albany for six years, though he had recently moved to a larger set on the top floor; he liked to think of himself going up in the world. He had spent a fortune redecorating the flat, replacing the patterned, swagged look with a lot of chic black-and-white Italian furniture. He’d had the carpets ripped up and the toffee-coloured parquet beneath lacquered to a high gleam, and into the bedroom had imported a huge polar-bear skin. On this he liked to loll and imagine himself borne aloft, like Hannibal on his elephant. Mirrored glass was inlaid everywhere, for the way it made the light dance in the room. The kitchen, where he never prepared anything more than an omelette, was an angular symphony in marble and steel. The expense was not in vain, either. Queen had done a photo shoot of the set when they came to interview him.

He pulled up the sash window and listened to the hum of traffic that wafted over the rooftops from Piccadilly. A morning’s mooching had driven him to distraction. His typewriter waited – the conscience in the room. Could he justify sloping out for an hour or so? It was the writer’s dilemma: you become so sick of your own company, and yet you daren’t be too long away from it. He picked up his sweater from the back of the chair and slung it over his shoulders, Riviera-style. He gave himself a quick dousing of L’Heure Bleue, and set out.

In the Albany courtyard he lingered for a moment, enjoying the monkish quiet. It still seemed remarkable to him that such tranquillity existed with central London right on the doorstep. So: back or front? The building’s Janus-faced aspect was another thing he delighted in. Leave by the front entrance and you were absorbed into the soothing gentility of St James, with its clubs and galleries and tailors. Slip out the back door and a right turn would pull you into the venereal embrace of Soho and its lovely squalor.

He chose the front way. The problem of Eureka might be more easily resolved by immersion in the smart neighbourhood Henry James preferred. Here on Jermyn Street he could imagine the rattle of carriage wheels and the rustle of crinolines familiar to the citizens of fin-de-siècle London. Except they were doing away with all that: the producers wanted it to be a present-day version of the story. So, out with the frock coats and opera hats, in with the brocade suits and kipper ties. The plot remained the same. Two friends revere an ageing novelist, Hugh Vereker. The narrator, a critic, writes an article about Vereker’s latest book; shortly afterwards he happens to meet the author himself, who suavely but firmly dismisses the efforts of the critic – of every critic – to locate the essential ‘secret’ of his work, ‘the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet’. The other friend, George, on hearing this, takes up the challenge and rereads Vereker’s books in search of their elusive secret. The attempt to unravel it becomes an increasingly fractious contest between them.

Having read it again, Nat felt that something had shifted in his understanding. Now the veils and screens of its intellectual puzzle seemed merely a decoy, a diversion from the central drama of the story, which was the unresolved triangle between George, his fiancée Gwen and the narrator, Chas. Was it actually a romance, disguised as a literary teaser? Or the other way round? He would have to decide, and sooner rather than later. The studio wanted the first draft in six weeks’ time.

At the little newsagent’s on Bury Street he bought twenty Peter Stuyvesant and a stack of magazines, which he carted into Wilton’s and laid to one side of his luncheon table: they still called it luncheon here. With a plate of oysters before him he riffled through Town, Esquire, the New Yorker. By the time he was finishing his sole meunière he had polished off Playboy, Queen, the Statesman, Vogue and Paris Match. He read impatiently, pecking at titbits and quickly discarding them. Nothing properly held his attention in this restless mood; he would get halfway through an article and abandon it, bored. It was only while he was idling through that day’s Chronicle that he found something that made him sit up in his chair.

Nat snapped the paper shut in a spasm of irritation. He and Reiner Werther Kloss had yet to meet, it was true, but that was no excuse for the director to sound quite so offhand about the script. He had ‘someone’ writing the screenplay, did he? Just fancy. Would it have killed him to identify that ‘someone’ as the award-winning screenwriter Nathaniel Fane?

He prickled as he thought of his consequence in the world slipping. There was no stock on the market more irrational than the stock of artistic popularity. His was on a downward plunge, it seemed. He had never minded disobliging references to himself in the papers, so long as they were accompanied by a photograph and his name was spelt correctly. What he couldn’t bear, what absolutely put a crimp on his day, was being anonymous, reduced to a mere ‘someone’, an also-ran. He would ask Penny, his agent, to contact the Chronicle – casually – giving notice that, further to yesterday’s news item, etc., Nat Fane would be writing the screenplay of Reiner Werther Kloss’s next film. Just that. Readers had to be kept informed, after all.

The bill was shocking, as it always was at Wilton’s. He paid and left, wondering where he might go to escape his oubliette of insignificance. A place where he might be spotted, pointed at, talked about. Outside, the March afternoon was mild, the sky clouded and sunless. He was near his club, the Nines, on Dover Street, but dropping in there would hardly buff up his diminished lustre; at this hour it was unlikely anyone would be around, and if there were they’d probably be asleep. He sauntered on, until he came to Brown’s, and decided that he fancied tea in the hotel’s lounge. This too proved a disappointment, a room whose air was dead but for the tinkle of china and the genteel murmur of a couple of elderly ladies who’d been there since 1951. He sank down onto a sofa, ordered a pot of Earl Grey and asked the waitress to bring him some newspapers, so as to check where else his name was being ignored.

Another thing nagged him about the Kloss piece, the remark the director had made about the themes inherent in ‘The Figure in the Carpet’. He’d got the stuff about writing as a torment and an obsession. But what was this about ‘luring us into madness’? Where on earth was that in James’s story? Perhaps the German’s imperfect command of English had misled him; perhaps he hadn’t meant to say that, or else he had been misquoted.

He had returned from the gents and was pouring himself another cup of milkless tea when he noticed something odd. His wallet, parked on the table, looked conspicuously slimmer. It had been plumped with a wodge of ten-pound notes – now there was just one. He looked about the room, mystified more than outraged. The two old ladies were still blahing away; a couple of American tourists had just settled in across the room – non-starters as suspects. His visit to the loo had lasted all of three minutes, maybe four, so whoever it was must have been quick about it. He supposed it might have been some light-fingered opportunist happening to pass by, but the lounge was so somnolent at this hour even that seemed unlikely. It was why he had thought it perfectly safe to leave on the table in the first place.

The waitress, catching his eye, approached him with an obliging smile. She wore a cap and white pinafore over black. He wasn’t going to make a fuss, but beckoned her forward conspiratorially.

‘Miss, did you happen to see anyone hovering about this table a moment ago? I ask because my wallet appears to have been relieved of about, ooh, a hundred pounds.’

The girl’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘You mean’ – she dropped her voice to a scandalised half-whisper – ‘stolen?’

‘That is exactly what I mean.’ Close up, she was almost cartoonish in her prettiness: heart-shaped face, button-nosed, violet-coloured eyes framed by long, dark lashes. The pancake make-up was as thickly applied as an actress’s. Beneath it, her expression looked pained to the point of tearfulness.

‘Oh, how awful! But I’m sorry, I – I didn’t see anyone.’

Nat clicked his tongue gently and glanced about the room again, though he sensed the uselessness of further scrutiny. ‘I’ve heard of “daylight robbery” yet never quite believed in it. So there’s a lesson. I suppose I should – would you be good enough to fetch your manager for me?’

She paused for a moment, sympathy still in her voice but a distant concern crinkling her eyes. ‘I’m not sure he’s here at the moment,’ she said. Then she gestured at the violated wallet. ‘Did they really take … everything?’

Nat stared at her, and chuckled. ‘Well, they left me a tip. A tenner. But I’d been expecting to keep the lot.’ When she still stood there, he adapted his tone to something more businesslike. ‘Perhaps you could find someone else in authority.’

The girl gave an obedient nod, and withdrew. Stupid of him, really; he’d only taken it out of his pocket because he didn’t like the thing spoiling the line of his suit. But it was just money after all, it wasn’t valuable stuff, not like the time they’d burgled the flat in Onslow Square, taken all the jewellery and peed on the carpets. That was horrible, barbarous …

Of a sudden he understood, and quickly rose from the sofa. He crossed the room and turned down the staff corridor where he’d seen her disappear. A liveried waiter halted, about to stop him – then didn’t. He walked on through the clanging kitchen and its steaming miasma, past white-coated staff too busy or indifferent to notice him. Instinct had taken over and directed his steps out into a service yard, where he found his waitress alone, leaning against a wall. Her cap was off, exposing a prim bun of mid-brown hair. She had just taken out a cigarette when she saw him, her face stiffening with surprise.

‘Hello again,’ said Nat, moving in close and producing his packet of Stuyvesant. ‘So sorry to interrupt your break. Here, have one of mine.’

The girl, faltering, said, ‘You’re not supposed to – it’s for staff only …’

‘Oh, I’m sure we can bend the rules just this once. And you did say your manager wasn’t around.’ He beamed charmingly at her, still holding the proffered smoke. With a twitch of reluctance she took one, and averted her gaze.

‘Do you have a match?’ he asked.

As she reached into her pocket Nat took a step forward and seized her wrist. She gasped in surprise, and tried to pull away, but his grip was as strong as whipcord.

‘Get off me,’ she hissed, eyes daggered at him. ‘I’ll scream and have the police on you.’

Nat smiled. ‘Really? Go on then, let’s hear it.’

She still fought against his grip, but from the panicked shiftiness in her eyes it was clear she wasn’t going to scream after all. Reddening with the exertion she muttered, ‘You big bully.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that, we were getting on so well,’ said Nat, who now pulled her wrist away and inserted his other hand into her pocket. He felt around for a moment, ignoring her outraged protests, and deep in the skirt’s folds found what he’d been looking for: a wad of ten-pound notes. He held it up for her inspection.

‘That’s mine,’ she said sulkily. ‘Savings.’

Nat half bleated a laugh. ‘Of course. Which you always carry on your person. Well, you mentioned the police – let’s have them decide which of us it belongs to.’

He began to strong-arm her towards the door, and felt her struggling intensify. She pulled against his hand. ‘Wait, wait. Please – don’t turn me in. I only took it because I knew you could afford it.’

Nat stopped, and cocked his head. Her innocence, so convincing a few minutes ago, had been but a mask. ‘How d’you know I can afford it?’

She gave him an unillusioned once-over. ‘You’re Nathaniel Fane, aren’t you? The writer.’

Nothing could have been better calculated to mollify his bruised vanity. He knew it, and almost laughed at himself for succumbing. He let the manacle of his hand loosen on her wrist. ‘I suppose you’ve seen me on the telly.’

She protruded her lip in casual affirmation. ‘I saw a couple of your plays. When I was at RADA.’

‘Ah. Enjoy them?’

She pulled a considering expression. ‘They were fine.’

Nat, despite himself, burst out laughing. ‘Now isn’t that the faintest praise!’ He scrutinised her. ‘RADA … At least your training hasn’t gone to waste. That little display of fellow feeling back in the lounge was masterly. You looked fit to bawl. It had me fooled – for a minute.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What gave it away?’

‘Ha. It was the moment when you looked at the wallet and asked if they’d “really” taken everything. The really was the tell – it suggested, implicitly, that you knew the thief had left something in there. A tenner, in fact.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So: you do this for a living?’

‘What, thieving?’ Her tone was offended.

‘I meant waitressing.’

She nodded heavily. ‘It pays the rent, just about.’

‘And the stage?’

‘I’ve done the odd thing. Some club theatre. Nothing you’d have seen.’

Nat raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ve no idea what kind of things I’ve seen.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m a bit too busy to go chasing after a policeman. Consider this a reprieve, but I’d advise you not to make a habit of it. Others may not be so lenient.’

She held his gaze for a grateful moment. ‘Thanks.’

He was moving off when he thought of something, and halted. ‘By the way, why didn’t you take the lot?’

She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t leave you without a bean. That would’ve been cruel.’

For a moment he thought she was joking, but her expression wore no trace of humour. He gave a little shake of his head as he exited the yard. The Good Thief, he mused. He might be able to make something of that.

Back at home he prepared for the evening with a bath, from which he emerged without Archimedean enlightenment, but soothed at least, and cleansed. As he dressed he listened to his favourite long-player of the moment, a series of duets by Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, whose velvety voice sounded almost like a tenor sax itself. How anyone could sing ‘Lush Life’ and stay in tune was beyond him. He made a phone call to check that he was still expected, then packed an overnight bag with a change of clothes, a bottle of ’59 Latour and a couple of magazines he hadn’t yet read. He briefly wondered if his hostess would provide the necessary, and, deciding not to leave it to chance, packed two Venetian carnival masks and his riding crop.

Before he left he hovered at the typewriter, contemplating his title. Was EUREKA! quite right? It had been nagging away at him. Opening his bottle of Tipp-Ex he carefully blanked out the screamer, so that it now read

EUREKA

He allowed himself a satisfied nod, as if he had just concluded a proper day’s work.

2

Billie, tired from work, descended the steps at Frederick Street to find Monty on top of the bin, gnawing on some unidentifiable bit of food. His fur, whose shade, depending on the light, changed from carroty to marmalade and then to ginger, had a somewhat oily aspect this evening. When she lifted him off she noticed a graze across his face where another cat must have swiped him.

‘Have you been fighting again?’ she asked.

Monty looked away, as if he didn’t want to talk about it. She unlocked the door and the cat traipsed in after her. She put a shilling in the meter and looked through the post while she brewed a pot of tea in the kitchen: circulars, a couple of things for Jeff and a letter for her, which she opened.

She sighed, ripped the letter in half and tossed it in the bin. She searched the shelf for a mug, but all three were in the sink, amid a heap of dirty plates and dishes. It was almost a point of honour to Jeff that he never did any washing-up, or any other sort of cleaning. He affected not to notice the mess, and scoffed at her for caring, though when he first moved into the flat he had been quick to remark on how run-down the neighbourhood was. Billie had done her best to brighten the place and keep it tidy. This week she had put a little vase of primulas on the kitchen table, and decorated the windowsill with an arrangement of her mother’s painted clay pots. The walls were covered with Jeff’s stuff and her posters of Impressionist favourites. In the bedroom she had hung purple velvet curtains that puddled on the floor, and put down a paisley rug, though it was hardly more than an offcut of carpet. She would tie a silk scarf over the lampshade to lend a touch of Continental raffishness. The cramped confines of the bathroom, however, seemed beyond remedy, and lines of clothes hung over the tub like flayed skins, wrinkled and somehow imploring.

She washed the dishes, and dried one of the mugs for her tea, which she carried into the bedroom. Carefully sliding a single out of its sleeve she put it on the Dansette’s turntable and dropped the needle on its revolving edge. It was the Beatles’ new one, which she had played so many times the night before that Jeff had eventually stormed in and shouted at her. It was a double A-side, which meant that both songs were supposed to be as important as each other. She wasn’t sure about ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, with its woozy key changes and its glistening, secretive air of possession, though, oddly, it had caught Jeff’s interest. Having disdained pop for as long as she’d known him, he condescended to stay in the room while this one was playing. But it was ‘Penny Lane’ that had grabbed Billie. She had never really heard a pop song that made the noticing of everyday life its point – barbers, bankers, fire engines, rain, blue suburban skies – going like a flurry of bright snapshots, one after another. It was jaunty and sad at the same time. She lay back on the bed, entranced. Here came her favourite bit, about the nurse who, though she feels she’s in a play, ‘she is anyway’ – another of the song’s riddles, the way it seemed both real and yet a dream. She loved that; she loved all of it.

She had just put it on again when the phone rang. It was Nell.

‘Are you all right, darling? What’s that noise?’

Billie leaned down to the Dansette and cut the music. ‘Beatles’ new one – just bought it.’

‘Ooh yes, I like that one!’ cried Nell, her voice rasping from the day’s cigarettes. ‘I saw them on telly the other night. Isn’t Paul gorgeous?’

‘I prefer George.’

‘Hmm. Trust you to go for the moody one. So did you hear from the agency?’

She cushioned her head against the pillow. ‘Yeah. It’s already gone, but they said they’d keep my name on file, blah blah …’

‘Oh! I’m sorry, love. How disappointing. Though being a secretary to that bitch might not be such a marvellous thing anyway.’

‘I s’pose.’

‘Why don’t you come over? I’m just putting a macaroni cheese in the oven.’

Billie glanced at her watch; it was tempting, she had to admit. Her mum was a good cook, and at her kitchen table she would be certain of a sympathetic ear.

‘I can’t, Mum, sorry. Jeff’s going to be home any minute. He’ll want some dinner.’

‘He could make something for himself,’ she said bluntly. When this provoked no response Nell let out a deep sigh. They couldn’t keep having this argument. ‘Well, shall I see you at the weekend?’

‘Yeah. See a film, maybe.’ They then had a little debate as to whether Billie would go up to her house in Kentish Town or else meet in the West End. Without anything being said she knew Nell would prefer not to come to the flat and have to talk to Jeff. A few minutes later, they said their goodbyes. At the threshold of the bedroom Monty stared at her, expectant. She went to the fridge and poured out a saucerful of milk, which he began slowly to lap.

Billie had begun to wonder about her mother. She’d noticed Nell ringing her more often these days, rather plaintive for her company. After two failed marriages, she had been living on her own for about five years. Her first husband, Johnny, she’d met when they were at the Slade; their seven-year marriage had produced two daughters, very few paintings and a legacy of bitter recrimination. Johnny, hopeless and alcoholic, had died of liver failure in an Earls Court bedsit when Billie was eleven. Roy, her second, was an itinerant Irishman who had been one of their lodgers, not an alcoholic but an ill-tempered gambler, inclined to bullying. They had weathered a few storms, including a long period when it emerged that he’d been stealing from her (his betting habit had run away with him). She stuck it out and endured the knocks until the day Roy lashed out not at her but at Billie, whose head happened to be nearest to him. Nell threw him out, though not before she delivered a smack to his head. The guilt she felt over these misalliances was expressed in a disproportionate wariness of her daughters’ boyfriends; she didn’t want them making the same mistakes.

Billie was listening to ‘Penny Lane’ for perhaps the twelfth time – even Monty looked a bit sick of it – when she heard the key scrape in the lock. She cut the record short, jumped off the bed and went out to greet him. It was hard to tell whether Jeff was in a good mood or not these days. The set of his mouth was lugubrious, and his shoulders stooped in a way common to people who didn’t enjoy being tall. He wore his brown hair mid-length with sideburns, all the Edwardian rage, but had recently shaved off the Beatles moustache, to her relief. His cool, unkempt look – hipster pants, suede jacket – was offset by a wide navy tie whose artlessness rather touched her; it meant he had manners enough to smarten up for his round of the galleries. Jeff made collages which he spent hours hawking about. The result of today’s enterprise she awaited with something close to dread.

‘How did it go?’

Jeff glanced at her as he sat down at the kitchen table and yanked off his tie. He put his Rizlas and tobacco on the table, ready to roll up. ‘Huh,’ he began. ‘The new ones I was trying to flog?’

‘Yes?’ She was uncomfortably holding her breath.

‘Mapleton’s want to take them – all six.’

She covered her sharp intake of breath with an exuberant whoop. ‘Jeff! That’s absolutely – oh, congratulations!’

Jeff allowed himself a wry smirk as he lit his rollie. Billie plumped down on his lap and kissed him. She felt a tremendous surge of relief, and behind it surprise, for secretly she had doubted that his collages were any good. They seemed to her dark and brooding and ungainly; a bit like Jeff. But here was affirmation of his talent.

‘So Mapleton loved them?’ she asked, once she’d recovered herself.

‘He wasn’t there. It was the manager I dealt with.’

‘Does he have the say-so?’

‘Yeah, yeah, it’s all above board. He said he’d get a cheque to me sometime next week.’

‘How much?’ she asked nervously.

He tucked in his chin. ‘Never you mind. But enough to treat you to a “slap-up meal” as they say in the Beano. So get your coat.’

‘What, now? I was going to do us some fish.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want to celebrate? After what I’ve been through?’

‘No. I mean yes,’ Billie said quickly, ‘let’s go out.’

What he had ‘been through’ was rejection; nothing out of the ordinary for an artist, though few were as prickly as Jeff. Whenever a gallery turned down his work he would go into a long sulk, railing against what he saw as a conspiracy to deny him his due. Billie did her best to assuage his injured feelings, but it was a struggle: Jeff clung to his legend of being neglected, wronged, sold short. It was his perverse badge of victimhood. As they ambled along the Gray’s Inn Road he talked with an enthusiasm she’d hardly known in him before. Thanks to this he could probably afford to rent his own studio, another step, he reckoned, in his mission to be taken ‘seriously’.

Billie hesitantly suggested he should wait before making that kind of investment. Their finances were still quite precarious, and a room, even round here, wouldn’t come cheap.

‘You might show a little faith in me,’ Jeff replied, with a short irritated laugh. ‘This game’s hard enough without your nearest and dearest reminding you how poor you are.’

‘That wasn’t what I said. All I mean is that there are bills to pay before we can risk the extra expense of a studio.’

Jeff scowled at this, and fell silent until they reached the Italian on Caledonian Road. Once they’d been seated at a little window table and had a carafe of red brought over his good mood returned, and he became voluble about his new patrons and their amazing commitment to him. As he continued Billie wondered at his almost childlike self-absorption, his ability to talk, exclusively and without interruption, about the all-consuming struggle of Being Jeff. Perhaps what had prevented her from noticing it early on was her utter besottedness with him. But she did notice it now.

They had met when she was at drama school and he was lecturing part-time at an art college. They had had to be secretive about it at the start because Jeff was already in a long-term relationship with an older woman, Gloria, a painter who rivalled Jeff in her self-absorption – and eclipsed him in her liking for a tantrum. Billie had heard enough about her to know that this was a woman who would not go quietly. Jeff kept putting off the day he’d ‘drop the bomb’, possibly out of fear, until Gloria eventually found out for herself and stormed round to Billie’s digs. Jeff, who happened to be there, took the brunt of it, but Billie caught a few verbal sideswipes during the encounter. ‘So this is the little cunt I’ve been tossed over for,’ she hissed, on first clapping eyes on her. A russet-haired fiend in beads and hooped earrings, she looked Billie up and down. ‘I’m surprised – I thought at least she’d have a pair of tits.’

For months afterwards the volcano of her rage bubbled and spat, sometimes down the phone, sometimes in personal visits to the street, when she would sit in her car and wait for one of them to come out. Jeff finally had to get the police onto her. At the time it had rather impressed Billie that he was prepared to ride it out for her sake; he later said that she, Billie, was the only woman alive he could have done it for. It had brought them closer, knowing that together they’d stared Medusa in the eye and not been turned to stone.

That was two and a half years ago. Since then, she had come to realise that Jeff was no picnic either. Neither of them had made much professional headway since their college days, but Jeff took his professional setbacks very personally. The abrasive manner he adopted with those who might help him was unfortunate. Billie felt his dissatisfaction as an atmosphere in the flat, like the fug of his roll-ups; it was hard not to inhale it. Now, perhaps, his luck was turning. She took a long swig of the wine and tried to concentrate.

‘Anyway,’ Jeff said, refocusing his gaze, ‘what else is happening?’

This was her cue to talk about something other than him. ‘Oh, I had a letter from the agency. The job’s gone, I’m afraid.’

Jeff frowned. ‘The secretarial thing? Would have been a waste of time anyway.’

‘Not completely. It would be something to tide me over while I wait. And better paid than what I’m doing now.’

‘No need to worry about that. With Mapleton’s cash we’ll be sitting pretty.’

Billie smiled, but felt cautious. ‘I know, that’s great, but I want to be earning my own money.’

‘Running around after that old bitch?’

‘Funny. That’s what my mum called her.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ Jeff muttered.

‘That’s not very kind,’ said Billie, bristling. ‘If you made a bit more of an effort with her –’

‘Look, she can’t stand me, so what’s the point in trying? I can’t help it if she’s bitter.’

Billie, hearing this, paused for a moment. ‘If she is bitter, she’s got reason to be. People – men – have let her down, quite badly. Doesn’t mean she’s a bitch. You could be nicer. If not for her sake, you could do it for me.’

Jeff raised his face heavenwards in a show of long-suffering disbelief. ‘God, what is this? I have one bit of good fortune that I’d like to celebrate, and instead we end up having to talk about your mother. Are you determined to put a downer on this evening?’

She looked away. There were all sorts of things she could say to him at this moment – truthful, hurtful things – but she took it as her unspoken role in life to keep the peace. She paused for a few moments while the waiter filled their glasses, then she changed the subject, coaxing him round, smoothing the creases.

They met at their usual corner of Leicester Square. Billie, preoccupied with the film listings in What’s On, looked up as Nell approached.

‘Hello, darling,’ she cried, bending to kiss her daughter and trailing a scent of Je Reviens, white spirit and Player’s Medium Navy Cut. She still had a sweat rag in her hair and paint flecks on her hands. She wore a close-fitting black jumper with holes at the elbows and a pair of blue slacks. Nell, in her mid-forties, hadn’t lost her looks, though Billie wondered if a little more attention to her grooming might enhance her romantic prospects. Like a taxi, her mother roamed about with her light ‘on’.

‘Right, there are two here I like the sound of,’ said Billie, tapping the magazine. ‘There’s Blow-Up, or Accident.’

Nell pulled a comical frown. ‘They sound lovely. Sure there isn’t one called Catastrophe?’

‘Dirk Bogarde’s one of yours, isn’t he?’

‘Hmm, I’ve gone off him a bit,’ said Nell, as if there had been some personal falling-out. ‘Didn’t like him in the one where he was a servant.’

Billie, who knew about these things, said, ‘OK, then, Blow-Up it is.’

Inside, a muffled aroma of dust and burnt coffee hung about the dark. Motes danced in the projector’s thick wand of light. They had arrived in time for the adverts, which always encouraged her mother to comment – a little too loudly – on the hollowness of a slogan or a woman’s outfit or some other absurdity that tickled her. Billie thought this chuntering might be related to her loneliness – Nell, working on her own all day, perhaps just needed to hear herself speak – but it embarrassed and vexed her nonetheless. She sensed others around them listening, and judging. A couple of film trailers followed, one of them featuring Terence Stamp.

Nell gave vent to a breathy erotic moan. ‘God, he’s gorgeous, isne?’

‘Mum. Shh.’

Billie felt bad for this prissy reprimand, and worse when, from the corner of her eye, Nell turned meekly towards her and whispered, ‘Sorry.’

A hush descended, the lights dimmed, and the sombre black certificate flashed up the title with its thrilling ‘X’ rating. Now she was safe to lose herself, tilt her gaze and soak up the colour and sound pouring off this giant aquarium of light. At her side Nell settled into her seat. They waited together like votaries at the altar of a dark and all-powerful cult.

‘What I’d like to know is –’

‘Christ, Mum! I’ve sat through exams that asked me fewer questions than you just did in there.’

Billie, exasperated, was stalking through the foyer, Nell lagging a few paces behind. Afternoon had turned to evening since they’d been inside, and street lamps blotched the square in amber. The smoke from a chestnut stall briefly blinded them.

‘Well, I’m sorry but I just couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’

‘Yeah, I gathered.’

Still feeling guilty for shushing her before the lights went down, Billie had been prepared to put up with a few of Nell’s interruptions. They started out quite simple (‘Who’s he? Who’s she?’) before bewilderment properly took hold and every knight’s-move of the plot, such as it was, prompted another urgent query. That Billie herself hadn’t altogether grasped what was going on put a fine point on her irritation. After a while she had leaned over and hissed in her mother’s ear, ‘I’ll tell you afterwards,’ which at least had the desired effect of shutting her up. It didn’t stop her fidgeting, though, or muttering beneath her breath.

I’ve got to find her a boyfriend, thought Billie.

She slowed her pace to allow her mother to catch up. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ she said, trying to soften her tone. Tucked behind the other side of Charing Cross Road was a little wood-panelled bistro, Chez Solange, where they ordered croque-monsieurs and beer. Billie, feeling calmer with a drink in front of her, looked across at Nell, blithely munching on her food. It was like being with a child. She took a deep breath.

‘OK. I’m ready for your questions.’

Nell gave a demurring ‘huh’ in reply. ‘You don’t have to humour me, you know. I’m only your mother after all.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

Nell waited a moment, then said, ‘All right. The photographer, did he – had he discovered a murder in that park?’

‘Yes. No. Maybe.’

‘Oh well, that clears it up.’

‘It’s ambiguous. That’s the whole point. You’re never sure what’s real and what’s imagined. I thought we were in for a thriller when he blew up those photographs and started to piece the clues together.’

‘Yes, I enjoyed that bit,’ said Nell thoughtfully. ‘That, and the wind rustling the leaves, when he’s in the park.’

‘It built up this sort of intrigue. But nothing follows from it. His studio gets burgled and then he just goes swinging round London, getting stoned, going to the club. It was like two different films happening at once.’

Nell nodded, though bafflement still clouded her face. ‘Mm … but what was it really about? What were we meant to think?’

Billie sighed, looking off into the distance. ‘I dunno. I suppose it’s about … illusion. Not being able to connect with anything. With anyone.’

‘Me laddo seemed to be connecting all right during that orgy. And Vanessa. Though I’m surprised they were allowed to show her fanny.’

‘I think that was Jane Birkin. Vanessa only showed her top.’

Nell protruded her lower lip in a conceding way. Billie could tell she hadn’t really satisfied her curiosity. She sometimes read the film crits in the Observer, when Jeff bought it; but they didn’t seem that clued-up either, and quite often they gave the plot away, which she didn’t like.

‘I don’t think you should get worked up about what it means. The important thing is whether it’s entertained you.’

‘But if you’re sitting there scratching your head …’

‘Doesn’t matter. You can like something – love it, even – without “getting” it, can’t you? It’s not always about a thing making sense, it’s about the effect it’s having on you. You’re an artist – you must see that?’

‘My things are quite straightforward. I look at a jug of flowers, or a garden through a window, and try to paint it.’

The restaurant was filling up with a Saturday-night crowd, young couples in the main. Something was going on fashion-wise, Billie noticed. A girl and a boy were standing side by side at the bar in front of them, both wearing paisley shirts, jeans, both with the same brown hair down to the shoulders. They were nearly identical! Nell had ordered more drinks, keen to eke out the evening until she must get the 24 back to Kentish Town and let herself into an empty house.

In a changed tone she said, ‘Talking of painting, how’s Jeff?’

She must be in a chipper mood to volunteer that, thought Billie. ‘He’s fine. Actually he had some good news this week. A gallery – you know Mapleton’s? – they bought six of his … things.’

‘Oh. That must have pleased him. They’re great. Mapleton’s, I mean.’ This last unsubtly implied that the same could not be said of Jeff’s collages.

Billie continued, with a lightness she didn’t feel, ‘Yes, it’s quite a relief. I don’t think he could have taken much more rejection.’

Nell half laughed. ‘It’s like Van Gogh – an occupational hazard.’

‘I know that. Anyway, he deserved a bit of luck.’ She paused, wondering if she should risk it. ‘He thinks – he says – he’s going to use the money to rent a studio.’

Nell pulled a doubtful expression. ‘Really? I thought he’d got a place.’

‘No, he used a friend’s until they sold up. And my flat, well, you know how small that is.’

‘But can he afford it on top of the rent he pays?’

Billie didn’t want to get into a discussion about Jeff’s finances, which were chaotic. He had run through a small inheritance years before they met and had contrived to lose his only reliable job – lecturing – through sloppiness (he’d kept missing his own classes).

Her brief hesitation caused Nell to sharpen her gaze. ‘He does pay you his half of the rent?’

‘Whenever he can.’

‘Oh, Billie, you’re going to …’ She shook her head. Be ripped off just like me was the unspoken warning.

‘We get by. And this could be the start of something. I don’t – I don’t want to discourage him. His confidence has been low.’

‘Then maybe he should do something else, because it’s a tough living. You need a thick skin. Nobody asks us to paint, you do it cos you must. Helps to have talent, mind.’ That was her mother: she could switch from virtual child to flinty grown-up in an instant.

‘Jeff’s got talent,’ Billie said with indignant loyalty, though in her heart she lacked conviction. Nell responded with her most philosophical shrug. The maddening thing was that she had earned the right to talk like this. Even when she was being robbed or abused by some man, or had failed to sell a painting for months, she kept the home together with cleaning jobs, secretarial work or a bit of modelling. She had gritted her teeth and ‘got on with it’, making sure Billie and her older sister were clothed and fed and at school on time. Nell had made some terrible choices in her life, but as a mother she had never let anyone down.

After dinner they walked up Charing Cross Road to wait at the bus stop. The West End traffic honked and growled on its way to who-knew-where. They talked a little about Billie’s next move, now that she’d been turned down for the secretarial job.

‘I sometimes think I should jack the whole thing in, try something else. What you were saying about a thick skin … I’m not sure I could cope even if I made it.’

Nell put a gentle arm around her. ‘Course you will. It’s just you have to wait for the break. Waiting’s the hardest part. In the meantime, here.’ She thrust a ten-shilling note into Billie’s hand.

‘Oh, Mum, don’t.’ It was irritating, because she could do with it.

‘How else should I spend my money?’

Billie smiled. ‘You could treat yourself to a new jumper,’ she said, fingering the hole at her elbow.

Nell gave her a playful slap. ‘I don’t need smart clothes. Who would I be trying to impress, anyway?’