Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

Looking down the street, he said, gravely: ‘That’s a blow.’ It was as if this development might necessitate some revision of his plans.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We’re friends. We talk.’

‘That’s good,’ said William, still considering.

Imogen was about to start work on a new film, I told him. ‘My Friend Claire. She’s Claire. Top billing.’

‘Of course,’ said William. Then he looked at me, his companion in loss, and said: ‘She was lovely.’ The stress was strangely on the second word, I remember.

‘Indeed.’

It had been like having a part-time sister, he said; a bigger and more sensible sister. More words were exchanged in Imogen’s praise. When I gave him money, it felt as though I were honouring the terms of a contract.

From the adjoining room I heard Marcus, giving instructions. The physician’s murmuring was followed by a brief response from Beatrice. Again the physician spoke; though I stood by the door, I could not discern the words. Then silence. A minute later, a high gasp. A physicianassisted paroxysm had been enacted. Charles Perceval was known to have administered this treatment to some of his patients. The inference was confirmed by Imogen’s glance when she emerged from the room – a mock-sly smile, with startled eyes, as if she had been caught up in some mischief, not unwillingly.

In the first draft of Devotion, Beatrice’s sister, an ostentatiously devout young woman, was the hysterical patient whom Julius had been asked to attend, thereby bringing about his meeting with Beatrice. Considerations of cost had brought about the merging of the two characters, but this revision had improved the film, Marcus told me. It had brought the film’s central concerns – ‘obsession, madness, reason and faith’ – more sharply into focus. The lard-coloured doll lay in his lap, swaddled in a towel, its single eye turned towards me. He offered to donate it to the museum, for room seven, but it was not in good condition by the time they had finished with it.

Though she had found the story ‘a bit silly’, Samantha assured me that she had enjoyed Devotion, especially Imogen’s performance. ‘She really has something,’ Samantha said, congratulating me on my good fortune. Val concurred. Imogen was ‘the best thing about it’, Val told me. But Imogen had deserved a better film, she thought. Aspects of Devotion had troubled Val. The scene in which we are shown Beatrice after the wedding, preparing for bed, for example. Why, she wondered, was it necessary for us to see her naked, even if only for a second or two? Why do we not see her husband undressed? Why always the woman? Some observations were made on the topic of objectification.

Perhaps, I suggested, this had been what Devotion had been about, to some extent.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Val. But she was inclined to think that the good intentions were something of an alibi. Not that she was accusing Imogen of any such thing; the fault was the director’s. ‘It annoys me,’ she said, in case I had not noticed. We were at the customary café, which had a rack of newspapers and magazines for the customers’ use. Taking a magazine, Val searched for evidence. It was easily found. ‘This sort of thing,’ she said, displaying pictures of a woman on a yacht. She too was an actress, and not one whose reputation was dependent upon the excellence of her body, as far as I knew, but here she presented herself in a bikini, in scenes of ersatz spontaneity: sipping a drink through a straw; shielding her eyes from the sun to gaze out to sea; laughing with a male companion. One picture was honestly posed – a coy topless shot, from the back, revealing nothing more than the undercurve of a breast. ‘This is what gets me,’ said Val. ‘The collusion. It gets me down.’

First impression of Val: the lack of embarrassment was remarkable. We had met to ‘clear the air’, on neutral territory – the café that became our favoured venue. Val’s eyes compelled attention, and her posture was exemplary. Much work had gone into the maintenance of the hair’s lush dishevelment; the same was true, I felt, of the air of well-being. Sauntering stride, beneficent smile, slow-blinking eyes – it all advertised the deep inner harmony that she had managed to achieve. I found the performance too studied. But for Samantha the attraction had been powerful and immediate: the conduct of Val’s son’s had become disruptive; she was called to the school to discuss the situation; and in the course of the third or fourth discussion a moment of ignition occurred. I could not understand it.

Crossing the park this evening, I heard a harmonica. The sequence of sounds was simple and not unpleasant, if not quite a tune; the improvisation of someone who could not really play. It was William. ‘Another skill I picked up on my travels,’ he told me. ‘Hear how sad I am,’ he said, and produced a mournful fading slide of notes. He was wearing exactly the same clothes as when I saw him before; they had not been washed in the interim. The house-clearing job was for one day only; since then, nothing. I asked him if he were staying at the Melville Street hostel. The notion appalled him. ‘You get some desperate characters there,’ he said, ‘and I’m not desperate.’ For now, he’s at a friend’s place. It’ll do for a day or two, but there’s not a good atmosphere, because the friend has some dodgy mates. One of them is a dealer; a ‘cold-eyed bastard’, said William. He had a lot to say about the cold-eyed bastard.

It was not so much a conversation as an attended monologue. I could not speak to William as easily as Imogen could. This was what I was thinking when he asked abruptly: ‘And what about Imogen? You still in touch with her?’

I told him what had happened.

William looked at me as though at a picture that had suddenly gone out of focus, and said nothing. He turned away and stared into the ground. ‘That’s terrible,’ he whispered. Grimacing, he scrubbed at his face as if to ease an exasperating itch.

We talked about Imogen, briefly.

‘It’s unbelievable,’ he murmured. ‘I really liked her.’

‘So did I,’ I said.

Still gazing into the ground, he put a hand on my arm, gingerly, like a blind man ascertaining the location of a rail.

‘Why have you been hiding her from us?’ asked Emma, slighted, after Francesca had reported that my attachment to the actress was somewhat stronger than had been supposed, and that she was a charming and unpretentious person. Imogen was in the midst of preparations for Le Grand Concert de la Nuit, which gave some plausibility to my excuse – that her schedule made it difficult to make plans. The explanation was accepted, provisionally. Emma believed that she knew the reason for my evasiveness. She had not seen La Châtelaine or Devotion, but from what she had found out she could understand why I might not feel comfortable with the idea of introducing Imogen. But Emma wanted me to know that she was rather more broad-minded than she imagined I imagined her to be – no less broad-minded, in fact, than her daughter. ‘She’s intrigued,’ Francesca told me.