Midnight All Day Read Free Page A

Florence raises her head a little.
    ‘Did you enjoy your meal?’ says the barmaid.
    ‘Yes. Particularly the fish. The vegetables were just right.Not overcooked and not raw.’ Then I say, ‘When does the bar close?’
    ‘Thursday!’ she says, and laughs.
    Without looking at Florence or her husband, I follow her out of the room and lean tiredly across the bar.
    ‘What are you doing down here?’ She says this as if she’s certain that it is not my kind of place.
    ‘Only relaxing,’ I say.
    She lowers her voice. ‘We all hate it down here. Relaxing’s all there is to do. You’ll get plenty of it.’
    ‘What do you like to do?’
    ‘We used to play Russian roulette with cars. Driving across crossroads, hoping that nothing is coming the other way. That sort of thing.’
    ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Martha.’
    She puts my drink down. I tell her my room number.
    ‘That’s all right,’ she says. Martha leans towards me. ‘Listen –’ she says.
    ‘Yes?’
    Florence’s husband sits heavily on the stool beside me and shifts about on it, as he is trying to screw it into the floor. I scuttle along a little.
    He turns to me. ‘All right if I sit down?’
    ‘Why not?’
    He orders a cigar. ‘And a brandy,’ he says to Martha. He looks at me before I can turn my back. ‘Anything for you?’
    I start to get up. ‘I’m just off.’
    ‘Something I said?’ He says, ‘I saw you in the train.’
    ‘Really? Oh yes. Was that your wife?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Is she going to join us?’
    ‘How do I know? Do you want me to ring the room?’
    ‘I don’t want you to do anything.’
    ‘Have a brandy.’ He lays his hand on my shoulder. ‘I say, barmaid – a brandy for this young man!’
    ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Right.’
    ‘Do you like brandy?’ she says to me, kindly.
    ‘Very much,’ I say.
    He drags his tie off and stuffs it in his jacket pocket.
    ‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘We’re on bloody holiday. Let’s make the most of it! Can I ask your name?’
    *
    I met Florence nearly a year ago in a screening room, where we were the only people viewing a film made by a mutual friend. She lay almost on her back in the wide seat, groaning, laughing and snorting throughout the film. At the end – before the end, in fact – she started talking about the performances. I invited her for a drink. After leaving university, she was an actress for a couple of years. ‘It was a cattle-market, darling. Couldn’t stand being compared to other people.’
    Yet a few days after we met, she was sitting crosslegged on the floor in my place, as my flatmates wrote down the names of casting directors she suggested they contact. She fitted easilyinto my world of agents, auditions, scripts, and the confusion of young people whose life hangs on chance, looks, and the ability to bear large amounts of uncertainty. It was not only that she liked the semi-student life, the dope smoking, the confused promiscuity and exhibitionism, but that she seemed to envy and miss it.
    ‘If only I could stay,’ she would say theatrically, at the door.
    ‘Stay then,’ I shout from the top of the stairs.
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘You enjoy yourself! Live all you can!’
    Our ‘affair’ began without being announced. She rang me – I rarely phoned her; she asked to see me – ‘at ten past five, in the Scarsdale!’ and I would be there with ten minutes to spare. Certainly, I had nothing else to do but attend actors’ workshops, and read plays and the biographies of actors. Sometimes we went to bed. Sexually she will say and do anything, with the enthusiasm of someone dancing or running. I am not always certain she is entirely there; sometimes I have to remind her she is not giving a solo performance.
    Often we go to the theatre in the afternoon, and to a pub to discuss the writing, acting and direction. She takes me to see peculiar European theatre groups that use grotesquerie, masks and gibberish; she introduces me to dance and