“They tell me you are an actor, Norman,” she said, beaming a great ray of interest at him. Her lovely fine-boned face looked even better when she smiled, which was rare. Models usually trained their faces to look well from all angles, and in what might pass for repose. “Where can one see you act?” she continued.
“I’m glad you asked that,” he said cheerfully. “Because one can see me tomorrow night on television if one has a telly.”
Joyce decided he was nervous, not rude. He couldn’t seriously be taking her on for that use of the word “one.” She didn’t like it herself; she didn’t know why she had said it.
“Oh, one has a telly.” She laughed. “But one rarely watches it. However, tomorrow is an exception. Is it in an advertisement?”
Sally’s and Leonard’s forks stopped halfway to their mouths. Norman looked amused.
“Norman’s a real actor, you know, Joyce,” said Sally. “He’s not just in advertisements.”
“Lots of real actors are in advertisements” said Joyce, flustered. She had thought he might be playing a fat Italian eating a tin of beans or some funny, clowning window cleaner falling off a ladder to get to his pint of beer. She was annoyed with herself, for her efforts to put this fatso at his ease were rebounding on her in an unexpected way.
Norman rescued her. He actually dared to rescue her. “Of course there are lots of actors in advertising, Joyce,” he said consolingly. “Lots of us wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without it, but tomorrow night is a play, a very good play, actually, a new one, by a woman. It’s her first television play and I think it’s going to go down very well.”
They all started talking about the woman, a night telephonist who got so bored with having little or no work that she wrote the play between calls.
“I play the guy who gets the girl,” said Norman.
“Is it a comedy?” asked Joyce innocently.
“No, it’s more of a thriller, really. It’s rather thoughtful and what the critics will call ‘psychological,’ ” said Norman. But he looked at Joyce levelly, and she realized with horror that he thought she had asked was it a comedy as some kind of insult.
Since she had been very young Joyce had found it easy to attract men, and to get them interested in her. She knew when to talk, when to listen, how to smile. It had worked over and over. It was still working with Charles. This fat guy was resisting her only through nerves, and she would reassure him as the meal went on. Her smile never faltered as she told him that she would certainly watch the play and was looking forward to it greatly. He smiled easily back at her. She had the oddest feeling that he knew what she was at.
Joyce managed a lot of the salad and as few of the various bits of suspicious meat as she could swallow. Norman suggested that they have a red wine as well as the paint remover, and this was much more to her taste. The early uneasiness past, she relaxed, and so it seemed did everyone else. In fact, it wasn’t a bad evening at all, she thought suddenly. There was nothing to tell Charles that would make him laugh delicately. You didn’t tell Charles that a poor, foolish, fat guy fancied you pathetically. That would be embarrassing, and it wasn’t funny. And in a way it wasn’t even true. Norman laughed and joked and was pleasant company. He didn’t seem ashamed of his bulk, nor apologetic for his existence. He had got over his nerves about her quite well. She must have been very successful at making him feel accepted.
Would she come back and have more coffee at Leonard and Sally’s flat? No, really she couldn’t. She had to work next day. The penalty for all this money was that you had to have eight hours’ sleep, whether you liked it or not. They did understand? They did grudgingly, but they were all disappointed. It seemed a pity to break up the evening. Joyce was determined to be gracious to the end.
“If I’m going to watch you tomorrow night on telly,” she said to Norman playfully, “would you all like to come to watch me on Friday? It’s this charity show in Park Lane, and I’ll be able to get a few tickets. There’ll be Champagne as well, so it won’t be all hell.”
Leonard and Sally were stunned. They had never been included in the glitter of Joyce’s life. They only heard about it secondhand. They weren’t to know, of course, that Charles would be away on Friday and that in fact the tickets for the do weren’t going at all well. They looked as if they had won the football pools.
Norman looked disappointed. “This Friday? Oh, dear, I can’t, I’m afraid,” he said. No explanation of what he was doing, just regret.
“Well, we’d simply adore to, anyway,” said Sally, almost hugging herself with excitement. “Will it be very smart? Would my black dress do, do you think?”
“Is it dinner jacket?” asked Leonard. “I have a blazer and black trousers. Is that all right if I wear a bow tie as well?”
Joyce was unreasonably infuriated with them. She wanted to scream that it didn’t matter whether they came in jeans—a few of the debby types would anyway. She wanted to shout at Norman, “You stupid, ill-mannered thug. I’m being kind to you, I’m making you feel normal, acceptable. Why haven’t you the manners and the sensitivity to see that and accept it?” But years of hiding real feelings came to her aid.
“The black dress would be super, darling, and blazers are really the equivalent of dinner jackets, I think they’re even nicer, Leonard. I’ll get the tickets to you, and I’ll meet you after the prancing-around bit and introduce you to people.”
Then in a very casual voice to Norman: “Are you sure we can’t persuade you to change your mind, Norman? After all, you did change it about coming here tonight, I’m happy to say.”
“Not Friday, unfortunately,” said Norman. “I’m meeting Grace, who wrote the play. You see, she’s thinking of writing a one-man show for me and it’s only in the very early stages yet, so we decided we’d have a read-through of the bit she’s done, to see how it works.”
“Couldn’t she do that another day or night?” asked Joyce icily.
“I’m sure she could, but it would be awful to ask her to change it. I wouldn’t let her down. She’s getting herself geared to have it ready by Friday. You can’t say suddenly that you can’t make it because you’re going to a fashion show. I mean it would be like slapping a friend in the face.”
“Of course,” tinkled Joyce. “But I’ll be loyal to you anyway and watch tomorrow night.”
There was the marvelous, graceful goodbyeing and thankyouing that Joyce was just so good at, and at the very minute she wanted a taxi, one appeared, and she was gone with a whiff of the most expensive perfume that money can buy.
Norman let himself into his flat and sat down on the huge swivel chair, which was the only thing he owned in the furnished apartment. He loved this chair; he took it everywhere with him and left it in his brother’s house if he was in between flats or off on tour. He could think in this chair, and he wanted to think about the evening.
Yes, he thought, letting the air out of his lungs in a big sigh of relief, yes, it had worked. It had been so hard at the beginning but it had worked. He had nearly blown it by telling Sally and Leonard that he didn’t like talking to model girls because they were so self-centered and empty. That was the trouble with Sally and Leonard: they were so nice and undevious you found yourself telling them the truth … or nearly the truth, anyway. Thank heavens he had managed to force himself into going. It was another hurdle, another notch, another score, whatever way you counted it. And, actually, she hadn’t been bad, that Joyce—she wasn’t by any means the worst of her trade, probably. In fact, he had imagined on occasions that she had felt a bit unsure of herself, not quite in control of everything and everyone. It had warmed his heart to see that, and he had admired her professionally for the way she got out of it. Grace would be proud of him; he’d tell her all about it tomorrow night when they were watching the play together.
Grace had taken him on as one of her projects. Grace had changed her life. They had met a year ago, when Grace’s play had been accepted for television. She was seventy-two, she
had a face like a monkey, she had the hardest life that anyone Norman had ever met could have lived. She had nursed a dying mother, a dying father, a dying husband, a dying son. That’s why she was a night worker. It was easier to get someone to sit with the dying for a few hours at night than in the daytime. Grace had never known any money, any success and very little happiness. She had never expected any. Her one rage was that she hadn’t written a play when she was twenty-one, instead of when she was seventy-one. She had known as much fifty years ago as she knew now.
She and Norman had met at the first rehearsal. Norman had been his old self then, laughing at himself too soon, too loudly, making jokes about being too big for the chair, too heavy for the floor or the stage, telling tales about how he got stuck in a bus seat.
“Why do you go on like that, lad?” Grace had asked him.
“Well, if I say it first, I suppose I think that people will know I realize I’m fat, and then we can all settle down again,” said Norman honestly. He had never asked himself about this comedy routine. It just worked—that’s all.
“I was settled down already,” said Grace.
The director had wanted to play the hero as a buffoon; that’s why he had cast Norman. He was going to make Norman into a ludicrous, no-hope guy, which made it whimsical and rather sweet that he got the girl in the end.
“That’s not the way I wrote it,” said Grace.
Oh, there had been a lot of taking her aside and explaining how important a director was, and how his views were sacred, and how Grace knew nothing about drama. She was adamant.
“He’s not a foolish character, he’s a strong character,” she repeated. “There would be no point in the story if he was a buffoon.”
“But,” said the director, “that’s why I cast Norman. He’s a character actor. If we wanted a straight hero, we’d have got someone totally different. Not his shape, if you see what I mean.”
“Everybody has to be some shape,” said Grace unanswerably, and to everyone’s amazement she had won.
She also became Norman’s best friend.
“Leave where you are, lad,” she advised him. “Get a new agent, live somewhere different. You’re only twenty-eight years of age. Don’t wait until you’re seventy before you understand how to win in this old life.”
Norman had been sure she was going to be a well-meaning person who was going to put him on a diet and set him jogging. He was doubtful. He didn’t listen to her easily. Gradually, like a dripping tap, her words sank in. “Stop apologizing, stop joking, forget being the clown who laughs on the outside and cries under the makeup. Like yourself, lad, like yourself—others will take you at exactly the same value as you put on yourself.”
Norman hadn’t agreed. He hated people who thought too well of themselves. He always wanted to put down the kind of toffee-nosed person who thought they were God’s gift to the human race. Drip, drip of the tap—he believed Grace, and everything she told him seemed to work.
“You’re different, lad, you’re not like stuck-up people. You’re a fine boy—just let people know you are a fine, decent boy. Stop pretending to be some joke roly-poly without a brain in his head.”
Week by week he’d worked at it. He gave himself tests. Sometimes he failed them; mainly he passed. Go to an audition. Never mention size, shape, weight once. Let the other guy tell you that you can’t have the part because you’re too fat. Go into restaurants, order what you want, no jokes to the waitress about the doctor saying you must build yourself up. Ask people to dance, don’t apologize, don’t explain. Seven months he had been doing it. It was really working.
And tonight. Tonight. That was really a triumph, the more you thought of it, a beautiful society-type model, as thin as a whip, asking him to a fashion show in Park Lane. No, it wasn’t pity. It had been at the beginning, the first ten minutes after she saw him, but not anymore. And she hadn’t been a bad girl at all, that Joyce, very bright, really. He was half sorry he had made up that lie about Grace and the read-through of her play. It wasn’t Friday at all; it was Thursday. Still, it wasn’t an excuse made from fear or inadequacy—it was part of being like an ordinary fellow. It was the kind of thing a lean, handsome young actor might have done, play hard to get. But he hoped he would meet her again with Leonard and Sally; she had been very nice.
And in the little bijou house, Joyce was walking around. She wasn’t tired; she couldn’t go to bed yet. She wished she had gone back to Leonard and Sally’s. He was a funny fellow, that Norman. There was some strength there in him that she didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand why she had begun the evening pitying him in some way. It was probably because he had been fat. She was very sorry he wasn’t coming on Friday. She would have liked to talk with him afterwards. He was very clear-sighted about things. She would like to know what he thought of posh charity do’s anyway—were they dishonest, were they a means to an end and therefore justified? She didn’t like him having his head together with this Grace person instead of being with the rest of them. Grace was probably a girlfriend of his, she thought, slightly annoyed.
She picked up the television magazines to see what they said about his play. There was a picture of Grace and a little story about it being her first play. Grace looked a hundred. She could be Norman’s mother, or his grandmother. For no reason at all, Joyce found herself smiling, and went to bed quite happily.
Everyone assumed that Libby Green had been born and christened “Elizabeth.” What else could “Libby” be short for? And when she was growing up, everyone read the Crawfie diaries, about the little princesses who were called Lilibet and Margaret Rose. Princess Margaret had not been able to pronounce her elder sister’s name. It was very endearing, and people thought it must be the same with Libby. Couldn’t get her tongue around a big word like “Elizabeth.” Wasn’t it sweet.
After a while Libby never bothered trying to explain. It was too complicated to say that she had been called Liberty. It sounded like the name of a shop, or one of those funny little bodices you wore to keep your chest warm and flatten it at the same time. Or the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. All in all, it was much easier to say it was short for “Elizabeth.”
And it was not a matter of being unfaithful to her parents’ dreams for her; they talked about little else but freedom and liberty in their house when Libby was growing up. The American Declaration of Independence was framed in the dining room, the words of the French national anthem had been stuck on a piece of cardboard on the back of Libby’s door for as long as she could remember. All over the house the walls were hung with extracts from Paine’s Rights of Man and the Magna Carta.
In other families during the war, children remembered talking about the Blitz, the blackout, the Morrison shelters, digging for victory and careless talk costing lives. In Libby’s house on Chestnut Street they talked about equality and freedom and the Spanish Civil War, and the conscientious objector.
One of her grannies said that the most important thing in the world was having an aired vest and never sleeping in a damp bed. The other granny said that having clean socks and being regular were life’s two priorities. Libby knew that this couldn’t be right, because Mother and Father thought it was all to do with meetings and posters and standing up for people’s rights.
There were always refugees staying during the war, and even after it. People were coming from different lands where they weren’t free. Libby knew that this must be the most important thing. Specially since the bathroom was always full of nonfree people, and sometimes she had to share her bedroom with girls or women who came from faraway places where things weren’t run properly.
Libby was very bright and hardworking. Miss Jenkins told Mother and Father that she would certainly get a place in the grammar school. They were pleased for her but worried because it was rather faraway; it would mean two bus trips each way, each day.
“Lots of people do that,” Libby said, afraid that she might be going to lose an education because they were afraid to l
et her take two buses.
“It is her key to a whole new world,” Miss Jenkins said, astounded that so many parents raised objections when their children were offered the chance of a lifetime. There was always something, like the cost of the school uniform or the fear of their moving into a different class system. She was surprised at the Greens; they were usually such forward-looking people. How strange that they should feel so mother hen–ish about letting their daughter travel what was not a great distance. Surely they, of all people, would realize the freedom that a child would get from a good education. And they should be able to give a bright twelve-year-old the freedom to take a bus, for heaven’s sake.
But then Miss Jenkins didn’t know what Libby’s life was like at home and, out of loyalty to Mother and Father, Libby didn’t tell her.
It would be hard to explain that she didn’t go out to her friends’ houses after school because Mother and Father were so uneasy until she got back. It was often simpler to stay home. She could invite people in, but then it always seemed odd that she couldn’t accept their hospitality, so she didn’t encourage friendship; it gave her more time to study, of course, but it was all a bit lonely. Not so much fun getting high marks if you didn’t have a great friend to giggle with in between, and to rejoice or sympathize with over all the adventures of the world.
But when she got to grammar school, it was different, and Libby met another marvelous teacher, as nice as Miss Jenkins; it was a Mrs. Wilson. She watched out for Libby, ensured that she became part of the debating team, that she was allowed to go to sports events.