Going Away and Other Stories Page 5

  A liberal male columnist wrote a long and learned article citing various examples from mythology and history of similar liaisons, indicating that there was nothing unusual about them or particularly wrong.

  And there was an email sent by a professor in Scotland to a professor in the USA which is relevant to the story.

  Dear Bill,

  Following your phone call to enquire ‘what the hell’s gotten into old Tom’, I have, as promised, been making enquiries. It appears that about four years ago Tom must have offended someone at the old place where we all toiled together and he was ‘eased out’ early but given the title of Emeritus Professor of course. He had to give up his rooms in college and go and live with Barbara in that freezing cold old rectory the whole time. You will remember Barbara as a right pain in the neck – or even lower! However, every cloud has its silver lining and out of the blue Tom was asked to do this TV series of which you may have heard but probably not seen. It was very good. Tom’s pomposity was just right!

  Maybe the experience liberated Tom or maybe he couldn’t stand Barbara any longer but he suddenly took up with this Tessa Avon. You have no doubt seen photographs of her if you’ve not seen her films. She looks a flighty bit of goods to me and what she sees in Tom is a mystery. Tom was never one for molesting young students, unlike some of our old colleagues. Maybe she likes his inflexibility, which you will remember no doubt. Once Tom made up his mind about anything there was no budging him, even if he was manifestly wrong. And he was always banging on about Stoicism. Maybe that’s why the college got rid of him. He could be ridiculous at times; but anyhow, one must wish him luck. He’s not a bad chap really.

  Best, Andrew

  Meanwhile, several journalists from the more popular papers, never more aroused than when a hideaway is ‘secret’, had run Tessa and the Professor to earth, discovering them to be staying in a small villa up a via in Ravello. As ringing the doorbell produced no reply, they camped outside day and night in the narrow via hoping to get a photo of the loving couple or possibly even an interview. After two days, when there had been no sign of either of them, there was speculation among the now disgruntled newspapermen as to whether the couple were living on ‘love’ or ‘fresh air’ or ‘had a big freezer’, until on the third day the grocer’s van drew up at the end of the via and the grocer, accompanied by three large Italians in black shirts and trousers and wearing dark glasses, passed several crates of stores, food and bottles through the front door, the three large Italians forming a guard round the doorway to keep the journalists at bay.

  After another week only three very determined journalists, including a photographer, lingered and their patience was at last rewarded when a taxi drew up at the end of the via blowing its horn violently and a few minutes later the Professor and Tessa rushed out of the front door and into the back seat. The photographer managed a shot of the couple looking extremely displeased. By making enquiries of the other taxi drivers at the taxi rank and distributing euros to them, the journalists found out that the Professor had hired the taxi to go down to Amalfi, so it was not long before they were snooping around the front at Amalfi. And their persistence was rewarded when they spotted the Professor sitting on the beach helping Tessa undress for a swim.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, piss off and give us a break!’ the Professor remarked in an unacademic manner as the journalists approached. In the meantime, Tessa rushed into the sea and disappeared under the water. The photographer, smacking his lips at the prospect of a shot of Tessa emerging in her bikini dripping from the waves, began to patrol the water’s edge, while the other journalists pestered the Professor with questions such as ‘Does having a young girlfriend make you feel tired?’, which he refused to answer. He lay silently on his back in the sand exposing his grey hairy chest to the sun. He then closed his eyes and feigned sleep, adopting the stoical pose for which he was noted.

  The Professor and Tessa had met because they were placed side by side at a celebrity charity dinner in London one night. The Professor looked very handsome in a rather old-fashioned dinner suit and Tessa delectable in a dress which was almost transparent. The Professor had always been rather shy with young women in flimsy dresses, but found himself completely at ease with Tessa, who told him how much she’d liked his TV series and questioned him closely about the research for it. The Professor was at some disadvantage as he hadn’t seen Tessa on the TV and was only vaguely aware that she was some sort of film star.

  ‘I haven’t come with anyone and I get very nervous in the dark. Could you possibly see me home, Tom?’ Tessa asked at the end of the evening.

  The Professor replied, ‘Of course.’ He was not going home to Suffolk; he’d booked a room at his club.

  He was rather surprised, however, to be invited into Tessa’s flat, which was large and very untidy in an obscure part of South Kensington, for a cup of coffee. The rest was inevitable. The Professor vaguely wondered as they grappled in bed whether she was a nymphomaniac, but decided he really didn’t care. He found her irresistible. When he woke up in the morning, she had become an obsession.

  *

  Tessa appeared delighted at his suggestion that they should go away together and live somewhere abroad. They both had ample funds from their recent successes. The Professor chose Ravello because he’d been there before, thought that the weather would be good and that it would be a very suitable place to hide out. And Tessa agreed because the name Ravello sounded romantic! They were very happy at first. They ate alternately at two very nice restaurants and no one appeared to recognise Tessa, who had scraped her long blonde hair back into a bun and always wore large sunglasses. And then the English journalists arrived!

  After the first trip to the beach, and for a few days afterwards, it was rather fun making bolts for a taxi with the reporters giving chase. But soon the photographer had enough photos to sell and the reporters were obviously not going to get any further information, and they all disappeared. The Professor had to admit quietly to himself that he missed not being the centre of attention. He started vaguely sorting through some of his papers which he’d brought with him. They were notes for a new book. Tessa lay under a sunshade on the terrace, sleeping a good deal and painting her finger- and toenails while gazing down at the sea and the wonderful view.

  And then one day a large packet arrived.

  ‘What is it?’ the Professor snapped.

  ‘Oh, nothing!’ said Tessa. But he grabbed it from her and as he looked at the envelope and where it came from, a strange numbness came over him. ‘It’s a film script, isn’t it? I thought we agreed no work!’

  ‘But you’ve started to look at your notes!’

  ‘But that’s different!’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  She took the script and went and sat down on the terrace and started to read it.

  The Professor was devastated! He had somehow thought that the idyll would go on for ever. But of course she’d want to ‘do’ something sooner or later. And if he prevented her there was a strong chance that he would lose her. A thought which filled him with dread.

  And so, over dinner, the conversation went like this.

  ‘Well, was it a good script?’

  ‘Yes! Absolutely right for me. My agent must have organised it and told the producers where I was.’

  ‘So you really want to do this picture?’

  ‘Yes, I think I am too young to give up working, Tom.’

  ‘Where is the filming to be?’

  ‘Hollywood and a small bit on location.’

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘I suppose only three to four months. It’s a short script. But you can never tell exactly.’

  ‘Well, you must go and do it!’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to say that.’

  ‘Why not? We’re told these days that the wishes of the individual are paramount and you must do what you want.’

  ‘Oh don’t be upset, Tom. I want you to come with me and be by my sid
e during the shooting.’

  ‘Much though I should like to be with you, my dear, I can’t think of anything I should like less than hanging around a film studio day after day doing nothing. I had some experience of it when I was doing my TV series.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be doing nothing. Couldn’t you be writing your book?’

  ‘Of course not. I need total peace and quiet with my notes and I couldn’t possibly concentrate with the background noise of the studio.’

  ‘But they could put you up in a soundproof room or something.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You know they couldn’t and wouldn’t. No, if you must go and get on with your work, I must get on with mine here.’

  He thought Tessa looked very sad.

  And so the arrangements were made. They hired a car to take her to the airport at Rome. On the way he said, ‘It’s going to be difficult us being apart, but it will be a test. Other people have done it successfully and maintained a relationship and in fact it is often stronger after a time apart. I suggest rather than trying to phone or even Skype each other all the time we only speak once a week. I think that would be better. Do you agree?’

  ‘If that’s what you want, Tom.’

  She was not normally very emotional but he noticed she was crying as she said goodbye before going through passport control and check-in.

  And he felt very sick in the car on the way back to Ravello, but once there he wrote down a plan for his days in the future. Up at seven and a few exercises or maybe a walk or a jog. Breakfast. Work until lunchtime – snack lunch in the villa. A short nap until four, and then more work until it was time for a drink and to go out to dinner. They’d never had a TV but he bought himself a radio so that he could listen to the World Service in English, and he did have the diversion occasionally of buying a London paper when he took half a day off and went down to Amalfi.

  For several weeks he and Tessa spoke on their mobile phones on a Sunday when she wasn’t filming. She seemed to him to be a little distant but quite happy, and she assured him that the filming was on schedule and said she was looking forward to coming back.

  And then one Sunday when he phoned he couldn’t get any reply.

  ‘Ah, gone on location. No signal!’ he thought.

  The very next day he went down to Amalfi, where the only English paper he could find was the Daily Mail for the previous Saturday. There, on page 2, the Mail proclaimed: ‘Tessa’s new love’, and there was a picture of her hand in hand with the male star of the film she was making.

  The Professor’s first reaction was one of disbelief; sure that it was a publicity stunt by the studio. But all the way back to Ravello on the bus he became less sure. Every day he tried several times to reach her on her mobile phone, but without any luck. He thought of contacting the studio; but no, he couldn’t stoop to that!

  Trying to block the whole thing from his mind, he bought a small laptop and started typing his book.

  The tourist season was almost over and it was getting chilly at night. He was halfway through the book. He’d fallen into the habit of having a grappa after dinner in the restaurant. One night while he was drinking it, he saw a copy of Hello! magazine which a party of Americans had left behind at the next table. He picked it up and idly skimmed through the pages full of laughing and self-satisfied celebrities. And then he turned a page and stopped. ‘Tessa Avon pregnant,’ proclaimed the headline. And there was a photo of Tessa standing sideways to the camera with her hand on her stomach and with her co-star grinning at her side with his hand over hers!

  He closed the magazine and took several deep breaths. If she was publicly saying she was pregnant then the pregnancy must have happened very soon after she’d arrived in Los Angeles! He knew the baby could not be his. Early in their marriage, after a miscarriage which had made her extremely ill, Barbara had insisted that he had a vasectomy.

  He staggered home in a daze, sat down at his desk and tried to carry on typing where he’d left off. But he kept hitting the wrong keys. He went and lay down and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. After the emotions of rage and jealousy came the self-blame. He was not used to admitting that he had made mistakes, but he saw now that if he had gone to Hollywood with Tessa this would never have happened. He remembered how she had cried at the airport. She must have thought he was trying to get rid of her, and it had been compounded by his only wanting to speak on the phone once a week. What a fool he’d been! This was a judgement on him. He did not sleep at all that night.

  Early the next morning he walked round the town trying to decide what to do. The smell of coffee and hot pastries from the cafés made him feel for the moment that life might still be worth living and he sat and had his breakfast outside one of them. Then he started to weep – something he had never done before in his adult life. But he was not sure if he was crying at the loss of Tessa or at his own pig-headedness. What could the future hold for him now? He didn’t want to go back to the mud and cold of his home in Suffolk even if Barbara was prepared to have him! Anyhow, she hardly ever spoke to him. She just sat at her word processor obsessionally writing her latest novel!

  His own book? Well, it was all right but somehow he had no enthusiasm to finish it. Another TV series? Well, nobody had asked him to do one.

  There was no way back. The stoics knew how to deal with situations like this. The example of Cato the Younger came to mind. He had no sword but there were other ways.

  So, later on, he visited the local doctor and, complaining of insomnia, obtained a prescription. That evening, he went out to dinner at his usual restaurant and afterwards had not one but three grappas. Returning home, he took Tessa’s photograph from his desk and threw it into the dustbin. He then swallowed all twenty-four sleeping tablets and calmly lay down on his bed, having first drawn back the curtains so he could look at the moon, which was almost full. At first the moon shone brightly, but then a cloud began to obscure it and presently a gentle rain began to fall. But the Professor was unaware of it and would not be troubled by earthly things again.

  The Recompense

  ‘Hi, Julian – over here!’

  I looked up from pushing my trolley in Marks & Spencer’s food department and saw a tall lady gesticulating at me. She was a little hampered in doing this as she had a plastic cup of coffee in one hand and a mobile phone clamped to her ear with the other.

  At first I thought I would take no notice. Julian is my name but I did not think I knew the lady or liked the look of her. But on second thoughts, which I later regretted, she did seem vaguely familiar, so I duly pushed my barrow towards her. As I approached she yelled into the phone, ‘Hang on a minute, dear, I’ve just met an old friend,’ and put it on top of her shopping so that she could embrace me with the arm that wasn’t holding the coffee.

  ‘You don’t recognise me, do you? It’s Marcia. You did my divorce for me years ago.’

  It came back to me. Yes, I thought it had been a rather successful outcome for a very difficult client. I couldn’t remember her surname though.

  ‘I thought I might bump into you,’ she continued. ‘I looked you up in the phone book and saw you lived round here. I’ve been in the States for years. Just over for a short holiday – borrowed a flat from a friend. Well, I’d better finish my phone call and let you get your shopping done. Catch you later!’

  As I continued pushing my trolley round the shelves I remembered more about Marcia. Although I had thought the divorce settlement was very advantageous for her, she had not seemed particularly pleased.

  ‘Ah well, I’m sure you did your best, Julian,’ she said several times.

  And she had been a stamp collector. Strange for a woman, I thought, although I know the Queen is one. Somehow it had arisen in conversation that I too was a philatelist and had a quite valuable collection. After that, every time we met she quizzed me about what stamps I had. I found it rather intrusive.

  I didn’t hurry my shopping. It was horribly hot outside on the King’s Road and I fo
und the chiller cabinets wonderfully cooling. I thought she’d forgotten about me as I didn’t see her again around the shelves, but there she was waiting for me with her bag of shopping by her side at the end of the checkouts.

  ‘Ah, Julian, there you are at last! It’s wonderful to see you again after all these years and a happy chance for me as I’m having trouble with the bank I’m using over here. Do you think you could just have a quick look at the letter I’ve had from it and tell me what to do? I don’t have anyone here to advise me.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best,’ I said, ‘but you must understand that I retired from practice some while ago.’

  ‘Of course; but just as a favour for an old friend. Look, why don’t you come round to my place for a drink either tonight or tomorrow?’

  I didn’t really want to go but I supposed it could do no harm. I am a bachelor and my life has been a little lonely since I retired.

  ‘I could come this evening I suppose, before dinner, maybe about six o’clock.’

  ‘Lovely! Look, I’ve written my address on this slip of paper. I’m sure you know where it is.’

  The address showed that the flat was in Dixon Court in Chesham Street, Belgravia, not a very long walk from my place in Cadogan Gardens, but it seemed far enough in the oppressive heat. I reflected that it had been very foolish of me to return to London from the country so early in September. I normally leave it until the 1st of October.

  Dixon Court turned out to be a dreary-looking block built after the Second World War, no doubt as the result of bomb damage.

  ‘Come up, second floor,’ her voice rang tinnily out of the entryphone. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t a lift.’

  She met me at the door wearing a strange Indian-style flimsy dress and a great deal of perfume.

  ‘Shall I get you a gin and tonic with lots of ice? God, it’s hot isn’t it, just like New York. Make yourself comfortable on the sofa over there and for God’s sake take off your jacket, and your tie as well if you want. You lawyers are so formal!’