Death of a Unicorn

‘It’s absolutely no use your making a fuss, Ronnie. I invariably get my way over things like this. Ask your friend Eric Martleby. I may say he is the kind of creature who arouses the tigress in me—a man who is barely fit to sell detergent powder trying to tell someone like you what he may and may not write! I’ve got to go now and watch this American chewing his way across a vast slab of beef and drinking black coffee with it, but next time I come you will be able to tell me exciting things about how you are getting on with your script.’

‘You make me feel like Boadicea’s husband.’

‘Don’t say that. I do feel a bit manic at the moment, but it’s only because I think you’ve told me what I wanted to know.’

‘Don’t put much trust in my lucubrations. Journalists have a notorious weakness for detecting non-existent conspiracies.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ I said. ‘You sound a bit livelier too, if I may say so.’

‘Oh, yes, I think so. I’m glad you came, Mabs. I think I might very well give this thing a go.’

‘If you don’t you really are going to find out how it felt to be Boadicea’s husband. I’ll come and see you again in about a fortnight. I’ll give you a ring first.’

‘Right. Take it easy with Fred, Mabs. He’s not a bad chap.’

VI

I shall never get used to Americans. My mogul turned out to be one of the absurdly over-civilised sort. He had a Dutch-sounding name but ordered in easy Italian a very well-judged meal at a restaurant where he was obviously a valued customer, and so on. But still there was that sense of almost manic competitiveness about him, as though doing these things was a way of scoring points in an immensely elaborate game. I suppose we all do that more or less, but the difference is that in his culture they seem to regard the game as actually winnable, whereas in ours it is more in the nature of a ritual, whose function, if any, we’ve somehow forgotten.

I didn’t mind. In fact, being of a competitive nature myself I took part with gusto and the meeting was going extremely well until, with no reference to anything we’d been talking about, something in my mind clicked. A silly little discrepancy. ‘He got money from the Jews, you know.’ But Mrs Clarke believed that B got his funds from the Kremlin. So how had my mother known? Oh, there were lots of possible explanations, but it would be nice to tidy it up and not leave it to nag away.

I smiled at my American, widening my eyes to acknowledge the elegance of his latest score, whatever it may have been, and returned to the arena with zest. I had to let him win in the end, of course, for business reasons. We were both perfectly aware of that, but he was a magnanimous victor.

After luncheon I telephoned Ronnie for Mrs Clarke’s address, then my agent to report on my luncheon and cancel my appointment with her for that afternoon, then Cheadle to say I would miss supper and be late home. A traffic warden, pad at the ready, was approaching my car when I reached it, marvellous omen. In fact the whole day seemed to be going with a cohesive impetus in my favour, and the thing was to let it take me, to surf the wave of good fortune. I had turned out to be rather good at surfing, thirty years ago.

You do not have much time to meditate on a surf-board, but in the lull of driving down to Haywards Heath it struck me that my behaviour was quite uncharacteristic of the person I am now. My ostensible reason for not checking with Mrs Clarke to see whether she was in was that I didn’t want to have to cope with a very deaf and elderly person on the telephone, or to seem to make too much of my visit. It was better to turn up and pretend to have been in the neighbourhood, then see how the land lay. I was at least partly aware that this was only a pretext to myself and that I was for some reason acting in a manner which would have been quite normal for the girl who worked thirty years before on Night and Day. Certainly I felt quite light-hearted as I drove, though I now wonder why I failed to perceive that the sense of urgency, of the wave rolling onwards, must, though it felt like something happening outside me, really indicate a subconscious compulsion, a foreknowledge of the shore-line I was riding towards on that slowly darkening afternoon.