Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

We stamped our feet and talked about women’s rights to contraception, and the irony isn’t lost on me today that, though I didn’t yet know it, the cells of my son were already busy dividing inside me.

‘Only when the scientists come up with that pill they keep promising will women’s liberation be a possibility,’ I remember Charmian saying.

Once the photographs had been taken, she and I crossed to the Star and Garter to use the loo. It was still early and the ladies’ saloon was empty. We settled in a crimson plush nook and she shook out a Capstan Full Strength.

‘Don’t even think about paying,’ I said, when she suggested that since the wind had been chill a tot of cognac might be medicinal.

‘Better just the one, though. George will be working himself into a frenzy imagining what I’m up to if I don’t get on the next train,’ she said, and I noticed her hand shook as she lit the cigarette. ‘And I really don’t want him to get ill again. He’s had pneumonia for most of the winter, poor bugger.’

The brandies were small; I should have got doubles. ‘Talking of George’s fevered imagination,’ I said, overcome with an urge to mock him in revenge for so soon snatching her away, ‘has the dreaded novel been a success? Was he the toast of the town?’

More than anything I wanted her to know of my most glorious action, to lay down with a flourish what I’d done with all those copies he had left on the island to defame her. But she was wincing and swallowing her brandy. Miserable that I’d even mentioned it.

‘I don’t know which upsets me more, if people read it or if they don’t. It’s humiliating for me if they do and humiliating for George if they don’t.’ She looked to the bottom of her empty glass with a sad shrug and called to the barman for another. ‘The only thing I dread about Closer to the Sun is our children coming across it.’

‘Well, if it’s any comfort, I kept my promise. I haven’t read a word of it,’ I said, almost bursting with the effort of not blurting out what I’d done with his books.

She snorted. ‘But, Erica, why should I give a fig if you read it, or not?’

I don’t think she noticed how lonely that made me feel, how it stung. I reached for my glass but it was mysteriously empty and she was still talking. I remembered my elation at the rocks, how I whooped as I sent them flying, one after the other, flaming orange against the sky, and watched until, sodden and swollen, they were carried away by the waves. I’d done it for her.

The barman brought us new drinks, doubles. ‘It was the worst thing George could have done, bullying me, accusing me, making me write in a fury like that. Afterwards, I started to notice that I was feeling almost indignant each time I ran into Jean-Claude with one of his willing muses. It was as though this incredibly romantic thing that George had forced me to write had really happened between us. When we finally got to it, it was nothing like I’d written it. There was no seduction in the bottled sunshine of a windmill, no bed of sweet-scented hay, no butterfly to open its bright wings. It was humiliating, but you know what? I kept going back with my jug of retsina. His squalid room always smelt of the pee he left too long in his pot…’

She laughed and pulled a dejected face. ‘And the bastard never once even pretended he wanted to paint me,’ she said, adopting an enraging poor-little-me pout. I thought of telling her that back in Boston Trudy had been told she would never have children, as a result of her botched abortion in Athens. She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Oh come on, Erica, stop looking at me like that. I’d already been beaten for the crime, I thought I might as well have the fun of committing it,’ she said.

She looked at her watch, shook it as though it might be lying to her. ‘Christ, I really must get to the train.’

The combination of brandy and her rush to be gone fed my fury. ‘And was George right about Greg Corso as well? All that stuff about letting a cat out of a bag,’ I said. ‘It’s always puzzled me. It was the day I found Cato. Corso was there. Look at you! You’re blushing!’

‘Oh, Erica, you’re so nosey. You know what? I used to watch you watching everyone on Hydra and think to myself: there sits a writer. I hope you’re still keeping your journals…’

I nodded, though it wasn’t true. ‘So, Corso?’ I persisted, enjoying the flush his name was bringing to her cheeks.

She chuckled to herself, avoiding my eyes. ‘You remember that night at Chuck and Gordon’s?’ and I nodded to encourage her.

‘After Kyria Polymnia had finished showing us around, I ran into him coming out of the cloakroom. He swept me close, looked me deep in the eyes and took my hand. “I came for you,” he said and when he let go there was something sticky all over my palm.’ She bit her lip, pulled her hair across her face.

I squealed. ‘Ugh! What did you do?’

‘I’m ashamed to say I let him kiss me,’ she squeaked from behind her hands.

‘You know, I always thought George was being paranoid. I didn’t believe a word anyone said about you,’ I said, feeling a clot for the tears that were stinging my eyes.

‘Oh, do stop it, Erica. You should know by now what my views on monogamy are. As I say, anything goes, as long as the sauce is the same for the goose as it is for the gander. Tell me, where is the law that ties me to my husband, when it was he who broke those bonds long ago?’ She was swaying across the table at me, glass in hand. I reached out to steady it. We might have been on the waterfront. ‘In fact, it was your mother caught them sneaking in. Patricia Simeone was her name. His secretary. How original was that?’ She had forgotten all about her train, was starting to slur, calling for a refill and telling me about my mother, about Connie nursing her through the worst, with kindness and by confiscating her sleeping pills. She told me that each night my mother came upstairs and doled a pill out to her with a cup of hot milk.

‘It was as well she did or I might easily have taken the lot. I felt like my head might burst cooped up in that Bayswater apartment with my broken heart and two babies. Our doctor friend Joe Leitz was helpful for a while but George became jealous and made me stop seeing him… It didn’t help that Joe L. was so damned attractive…’ She stopped with a small sigh and I leapt, gripped her by the shoulders like she might make a run for it.

‘Joel?’

She looked me in the eyes and nodded. ‘Yes, Joe L. Your mother’s friend, and for a brief time my doctor.’

‘The friend who secretly bought her a car?’ I said, just to be sure, and Charmian nodded again, told me he’d bought it so that Connie might drive herself to their love nest. I downed my brandy like it might souse my anger. I demanded to know why she hadn’t told me when I asked before. Why she’d insisted on lying to me about everything.

‘Erica, please understand,’ she pleaded. ‘I struggled not to tell you all those times you asked me on Hydra, but you know…’ she reached for my hand, held it to her cheek ‘… she was my friend.’ I wanted to snatch my hand back but it turned out I couldn’t.

‘But she was my mother,’ I whimpered, as she carried on.

‘She used to come to me in my dreams… I wanted so badly to protect you…’ She was trying to explain. ‘You were wide-eyed like something that had suddenly hatched, so terribly vulnerable and surrounded by savages. I kept an eye on you, tried not to lecture you too often, as though the boys you slept with were any of my business…’

‘Oh stop it!’ I interrupted with a sniffle and we both managed a rueful laugh.

She gave me her handkerchief. ‘There I was nagging you about contraception and what you should read, a hundred things to do with lentils. I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to take Connie’s place. You had so much to deal with, quite apart from her eternal absence. Bobby’s moods, that awful boy you were so smitten with. It was never the right time to tell you that your mother wasn’t a saint. But look at you now! I can see you’re stronger and that you have a right to know how she managed her life.’