Writing for Nothing Read online

  When I’ve vomited I feel much better. The cubicle is calm. It’s a good idea to wait here, just for a while, while the cistern refills. It’s a good sound – a steady sound: as the float rises, so the valve closes.

  She’d turn towards the audience wearing the blood like a mask:

  — A servant’s a servant.

  — And a whore’s a whore.

  But the cruellest line she’d stolen for herself (it was Daddy’s theatre, she could do what she liked):

  — You were too easy to be really exciting.

  It’s surprisingly clean on the floor, but I can’t stay here all day. In no time at all, I’m on my feet, I’m unlatching the door, I’m in the washroom where the porcelain urinals are. The light comes soft and beautiful through the ground-glass windows. It’s like a pub at lunchtime after a funeral – the best time, the best light. Things are improving, oh yes. The water’s cold. I use some to rinse the taste out of my mouth and some to splash my face. I work the water into my hair with my fingers. Suddenly it seems like a holiday – heat, light, water in my hair. What was it she said? ‘It’s summer, after all.’ But when did we last lie naked listening to the sea?

  — John?

  When did we last stand on a terrace that burned our feet?

  — John? We thought you’d gone.

  — I was washing my face.

  — So I see.

  — What’s happened to the meeting?

  — Finished. We waited for you.

  The enormity of that ‘So I see’.

  — Listen … I don’t want you to feel that anyone’s gone behind your back.

  — No.

  — Your opinion is very highly valued in this building.

  — Yes.

  — I’d be a fool not to pay attention. I’m the new boy. I’m still learning the ropes.

  — Yes.

  — The last thing I want to do is hurt you.

  — Hurt me? How?

  — In any way, John, in any way. Let me make that clear.

  You’ve made it clear. Thank you. Can I go now? And please stop using intimacy as a tool.

  — I hear you’re doing a telly thing. How’s it going?

  — What telly thing?

  — Maddy told me you were doing a telly thing.

  — Madeleine?

  — Some telly thing. Yes.

  — I don’t work for television.

  — Well that’s what I thought. Only Maddy told me you were.

  — Madeleine’s wrong. She doesn’t always know what she’s talking about, I’m afraid – but you’ve probably realised that.

  He just looks at me. It’s obviously never crossed his mind. This man knows nothing about the deviousness of human beings.

  — I’m thrilled, actually.

  — Oh? Are you?

  — Thrilled – yes – to be working with Madeleine. I think she’s hugely underrated. It’s far too long since she was offered a leading part. You should be proud of her.

  — Not since the Strindberg.

  — The what?

  — The Strindberg.

  — Really?

  You can see he’s lost. Look at him. His eyes have tightened – as if I’m print he finds too small to read.

  — Listen, he says, picking a hair off my sleeve, why don’t you take a break for a few days?

  — Why should I do that?

  — I don’t know … Give yourself some space. Take Madeleine to that place of yours in the country. Berkshire, isn’t it?

  — We don’t have a place in the country.

  — Yes you have. I’ve been there.

  — We sold it.

  — I didn’t know that.

  — There’s no reason why you should.

  — I’m sorry.

  — It was a business decision.

  — I’m sorry all the same.

  — It was Madeleine’s.

  — The house – or the decision?

  What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m incapable of making decisions? That I defer to my wife? That I married for money? Or is he wondering whether her property – Daddy’s gift – remains outside my control?

  — We owned it jointly. It was a joint decision.

  — I’m joking. Calm down.

  — I’m perfectly calm.

  — Calm down, John. And take a break. That’s my advice. Take as long as you need. And when you’re back the two of us can talk.

  — We are talking.

  — I mean really talk. Talk about the work.

  — As long as I need.

  — Exactly.

  — And how long would you say that was?

  — How long? That’s a judgement only you can make. Listen, I have to go. I have a lunch.

  One last smile, then he switches off the beam of his attention and runs up the stairs like a schoolboy.

  The men are sitting on the steps in the sun, eating out of paper bags. In one pile are the broken slabs of tarmac, the crust of the street – in another, the earth. At the bottom of the deep dry pit there are pipes wrapped in rags. Television thing. What exactly has she been saying? And the play – even this morning as she was sitting there accusing me of strangeness, she already knew. She’d had the offer. She’d accepted the offer. She was basking in her secret glory like a lizard on a rock.

  Everyone’s clustering round the doorways of the pubs and bars. The expression is ‘spilling on to the street’ – but these people aren’t spilling, they’re seething. The pubs and bars, with their black open doorways, are like the nests of insects about to swarm. These are the relentless young, the childless young, looking for the sunshine the way an actor on stage looks for the light. What makes it so easy for them to laugh and chatter, tip back their heads, open their mouths? They look like a commercial for themselves: an image designed to sell themselves back to themselves – tip your head, open your mouth, spend money, be happy.

  But this is strange: one of the insects – it’s a beetle with vast black eyes – detaches itself from the wall – puts down its empty glass – detaches itself from the wall and begins moving towards me.

  — Hello, it says.

  My head is condensed double in the black mirrors. The beetle is amused.

  — What are you doing? it says.

  There’s no reason why I should speak to a beetle.

  — You don’t remember me, do you, it says, still smiling. We met yesterday, it says.

  Everything’s buzzing. The world’s too hot.

  — We met after the reading, it says. Rachel. I’m Rachel.

  You may be Rachel, but that doesn’t mean I have to speak to you. Just because you’re human and have a name doesn’t mean I have to speak to you. If I spoke to everyone who was human, if I spoke to everyone who had a name, how would the chattering ever stop?

  — I was wondering, says Rachel, what it would be like to lie down in that hole and be covered in earth.

  — Oh were you?

  — Yes I fucking was.

  You see: this is what happens when you try and make conversation. She takes off the beetle-black glasses. Her eyes flick from side to side, examining each of mine in turn.

  — I know you hate my play.

  — I’m sorry? I don’t remember saying that.

  — Not to my face.

  I beg your pardon? People don’t talk like this. They are discreet, tolerant, respectful, and full of shit.

  — Alright then: let’s discuss it. I’ll buy you a drink.

  — You’ll buy me a drink?

  — Is that funny? Why is that funny?

  — I’ve had a drink.

  — Have another.

  — I can’t. Sorry. Listen …

  But why is she placing her hand on my shoulder? – by what right? – by what right is she laying her hand like this on my shoulder and saying, ‘I can’t stop. I’ll be late’? Her eyes flick. Finally she removes her hand, but not before she’s kissed my cheek – not a theatre-kiss, but a real one in which her l
ips touch my skin.

  (I suppose it would be cool at first – and the earth would be soft and comfortingly heavy, like a woman lying on you. But in the end it would be dark, and when you opened your mouth to scream the soil would flood right in to the root of your tongue.)

  Then she’s gone up the steps and into the theatre through the glass door which swings very slowly shut as the sky slides across it.

  There’s an art to having lunch on your own – a particular joy. Sit at the back. Find somewhere dark. That way everything gleams. The glass gleams and the knives look as if their blades are made of mercury. The street’s still visible through the window – people – sunlight – but far away, with the sound switched off. No one blocks your view – no husband, no wife, no lover, no colleague, no friend – no one mops up your attention. Your relationship is with your food, with your glass of wine, with the click of cutlery. Your conversation is with yourself. (And isn’t this where God sits at lunchtimes – at the back of an inexpensive restaurant – an old man with long white hair looking guiltily at creation through the plate-glass window while he strokes the creases out of the tablecloth?)

  There’s something unbalanced about that girl, and they all refuse to see it. That odd bitch kiss of hers, for example – what was that supposed to mean? I can still feel it on my skin, like a dab of ether. ‘Trouble’ – she’s what my mum and dad would’ve called ‘trouble’ – not the Madeleine kind: capricious, self-conscious – no, I’m talking about the serious kind: splinters of glass – bite-marks – blood in the sink – madness, basically. Oh yes, oh yes, it’s all very well for him to sit there in his aesthetic sanctuary and talk about ‘discontinuities of feeling’ – to talk about being bold and brave – but the words he should really be using are ‘pornography’, ‘despair’, ‘narcissism’, ‘psychosis’. Why not just tear out her heart, tear out the writer’s heart on stage and ‘drink out of her skull’?

  Fuck this – what I need is a salad – something green and living – and a bottle of wine so cold it tastes of steel.

  — Why are you hiding?

  — I’m not hiding.

  — Well open the door then.

  When I opened the door, the music became not so much louder, as more exact. She stood there breathless – which was to be expected – she’d raced up three flights of stairs – although perhaps the real reason was the obscene current of the play still running through her.

  — Why are you standing there in the dark? she said.

  I tried to pull her into the room, but she resisted me.

  — I can’t, she said, the people from America are here.

  The people from America? She was still panting. She adjusted her dress, pulling it down over her hips. She said:

  — Really, they’re not as terrible as you think.

  — What people from America?

  — They want to talk movies.

  — Talk movies?

  — I told you they were coming. They want to film the play. They want to make a film of the play. And they want me. They want me to be in it. Isn’t it incredible?

  — It’s totally incredible, I said.

  Now I could see why she was breathless.

  — It’s totally incredible, I said, that anyone who ‘talks movies’ would consider making a film out of Strindberg. And it’s even more incredible, I said, that anyone would believe them.

  — What?

  And she obviously did. She really did believe that the people who set the world alight with napalm, then doused the flames with Coca-Cola, that these same people could possibly be interested in the unprofitable micro-emotions of turn-of-the-century Swedes, let alone make a film about them with their disgusting bloodstained dollars.

  — Please come downstairs and meet them, she said, or it will look bad. They know you’re here. They’ll think you’re hiding.

  — I don’t like these parties.

  — I know you don’t. But just for tonight. Just for me. Please. They’re really not as terrible as you think.

  From the fact she’s said this twice, I began to get an idea of just how terrible the people from America must be. Somehow I could see them ballooning up the stairs towards me – gas-filled balloons, grinning and obese, with long silver strings.

  — Please. – She licked my ear. – We need the money.

  The whole house was throbbing. It beat like a heart laid bare in an experiment. I thought: how strange that paper cones can make so much noise. I also thought: it’s ‘my’ house, and so it must be ‘my’ heart – although I knew that wasn’t true, because my own heart was packed safely away behind my ribs, where only Madeleine could touch it.

  This was nothing to do with money: it was to do with vanity. It was to do with her moving image being projected onto giant screens.

  — I don’t like Americans, I said.

  — You’ve never met them.

  — I’m talking about their politics.

  — Oh, politics, politics … Just come and say hello, that’s all.

  The house was full of men and women I’d never met. They all had that carefree look of people who are eating and drinking at someone else’s expense, who are experiencing (as they let their cigarettes burn out, for example, on a surface of eighteenth-century mahogany) the unique joy of trashing someone else’s property. As we got closer to the source of the music – a dark room full of ugly dancing – I found it harder and harder to hear. I couldn’t understand how all around me people could go on talking. Madeleine’s mouth was right next to my ear again, almost covering it. She was saying in the intensest of whispers ‘… one of the richest women in California …’ before she squeezed my fingers and vanished.

  The woman in front of me appeared to be dead. Her skin was like putty. She held out her hand, but when I gripped it, the hand didn’t grip back. It was cold. The muscles felt wasted. The man beside her was more like the American of my imagination – huge, bearded – a conqueror.

  The people from America began to talk: something about how wonderful something had been. How there was a great need – a great desire – an appetite for something – because what was it someone had said? – because someone had said something about something – which was so true, which was so incredibly true – was it Chekhov maybe? – one of those Russians anyway – and what an amazing thing, what an amazing thought that someone could do something – read? – write? – read or write something and then after decades – or even centuries – and then there was someone – Madeleine – there was Madeleine who was truly amazing – and I mean really and truly amazing – there was an incredible something for Madeleine – future maybe – an incredible future or something ahead of her – you could sense it – we could all sense it – hey, come on: we could all sense it sitting there in the something – the dark – the theatre – everyone could sense it – the future, the amazing future – and then the screen – doing something to the screen – transforming? – transferring – transferring it to the screen – capturing something and transferring it to the screen – transferring the amazing future to the screen, that was the task for someone – for them? – for us? – no, not for us – of course not for us – for them – for people from America – the task for people from America was to capture something – everything – to capture everything and transfer the amazing future to the screen.

  — Absolutely, I said.

  — I hope you were nice to them.

  — What?

  — I hope you were nice to them. Unzip me.

  — Of course I was nice to them.

  She bowed her head to let her hair fall clear of the zip. The tight dress split open like a cellophane wrapper. The house was quiet. It would soon be light.

  — What did you say to them?

  — How d’you mean?

  — You weren’t rude? You didn’t close any doors?

  Where had she learned to speak like this?

  — Doors? Of course I didn’t close any doors.

  — Thank you
.

  Out in the street the first people – the people who’d slept – the people who’d put out clean breakfast bowls and set their alarms before they went to bed – the people who quite possibly dreamed of leading the exact life we were at that moment leading – the life of the theatre – were on their way to work. You could hear the brisk click of their footsteps.

  — What d’you mean, I said, about the money?

  — I don’t want to talk about money, said Madeleine.

  Underneath the dress she was – as was her habit – completely naked.

  — I want you to kiss me.

  The bill appears in an embossed vinyl folder. There’s a word for this: leatherette. Inside the folder there’s a little pocket. The pocket says: ‘Place your credit card here.’ The bill says: SERVICE IS NOT INCLUDED. The empty bottle says: ‘Non disperdere il vetro nell’ambiente’ – Don’t throw (disperse) glass into the ambience (the environment, the outside world). Two arrows interlocking in a circle imply that the bottle will be melted down and turned into other bottles, saving us from extinction: and the more we drink, the more we will be saved.