Reality and Dreams Read Free

that matters is how are you feeling?’
    ‘Ah.’
     
    His visit to Tom was
indeed by way of a probe, and Johnny Carr was furious to be confronted with so
indelicate a truth. He might have known that Cora’s father was unlikely to be
mellowed by suffering. And anyway, Claire had urged the visit far too soon: ‘He
could certainly help you, Johnny. He knows so many people.’
    As it
was, Tom said, ‘Redundancy comes to this:
    Nobody
fires a man if he is exceptionally good, unless the whole outfit closes down.
Your paint concern going out of business?’
    ‘No,
just restructuring. But forget it, Tom —’
    ‘Very
well.’
    Johnny
had put on his best business suit, which he intended to keep in first-class
condition for interviews. After visiting Tom he went home, took off the special
suit, and put on his clothes.
    ‘How’s
Pa?’ said Cora.
    ‘He
seems to be all right.’
    ‘All
right!’ said Cora, who was fond of her father. ‘What do you mean, all right,
when he has broken bones all over his body. Sixty-three and nurses day and
night. Poor Pa, he’s lucky to be alive. He works so hard, he puts everything he’s
got into films. He lives films. How can he be all right?’
    ‘He’d
like to see you,’ said Johnny.
    ‘Did he
say so?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Should
I just go, or make an appointment?’ said Cora.
    ‘Make
an appointment with his secretary,’ suggested Johnny. ‘Mentally, he is back at
work.’
    Cora
just went. Her job in France was over and she was back in the office at Channel
Four. She was tall, with light brown hair and sometimes wore large gold-rimmed
spectacles. She had long legs, narrow hips and, when she visited Tom, was
dressed in a short skirt and sweater, both in turquoise blue. Cora was
twenty-nine. She bore no resemblance whatsoever to her mother, Katia, who was a
different sort of beauty, of Bulgarian-Polish origin. Katia was dark and bold,
now well into her second marriage. She had ‘served her time’ she said; she had
paid her debt to society with the film director Tom Richards, and was now
getting back her breath with the highly-paid managing director of a building
society, definitely a non-genius, but not, like Tom, a big spender.
    Cora
sat in the bedside-chair while the day nurse, Julia, pulled Tom’s sheets
straight and puffed the pillows.
    ‘We’d
like some tea,’ said Tom.
    Julia
looked at her watch.
    ‘Never
mind the time. We’d like some tea.’
    Cora
was so beautiful, Tom wished she were not his daughter. He looked and looked.
He had always been dazzled by Cora, always besotted, always protectively chaste
so that he resented any other man who was not chaste with Cora, a string of
men, culminating with Johnny, whom, like a fool, she had married. She had
married him for his looks which were admittedly star quality; but marriage was
not a film; Cora was not a director; she had cast him in the role of a husband
and he was hopeless at it. In screenplays the husband has a script to go by.
Johnny had next to none.
    ‘Now he’s
out of work,’ said Tom.
    ‘Who is
out of work?’
    ‘Johnny.’
    ‘Oh,
Johnny. He’s looking for another job. There are millions out of work.’
    ‘How do
you manage the household budget?’
    ‘You
sound like Mum. We haven’t had much time to budget.’
    ‘Oh,
Cora, don’t think of maintaining a man financially. I beg you, don’t start.’
    ‘For
better or worse…’ said Cora. ‘You marry for better or worse. I came to see
how you were,’ Cora said. ‘I don’t want to talk about money, Pa.’
    Julia
brought in a tray of tea for two. Claire followed.
    ‘You
have a harem to wait on you, Tom,’ she said. ‘What more can you want?’
    ‘My
job,’ said Tom. ‘I want to finish my film but I can’t do it. Someone else will
do it. I’m in bed. I’m out of work.’
    ‘There
will be other films,’ said Claire. ‘There always have been.’
    ‘My
film is not replaceable,’ said Tom. ‘No work of art can be replaced. A work of
art is