Dream Sequence Page 4

  García was smiling at him. “So, you? What do you like to look at here?”

  “Oh, that. Well, all of it really. I mean it’s all, you know, stunning.”

  “But if you are going to show me just one thing?”

  “Oh, okay. You want me to? I tend to like the more modern things, I suppose you could say. I can show you.”

  “Please.”

  “Okay.” Henry looked around for an exit in the direction of the Impressionist paintings, sure that he would find something in there. “We go this way.” As they set off, he said. “Thank you, by the way, for seeing me earlier. I really think the script is amazing and the part. I can’t stop thinking about him. I feel him, you know.”

  “I understand.”

  “I mean, I …”

  “You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay. I see it.”

  “You see it?”

  “In your audition. I know you are serious. I know you want it. Where are we going?”

  “It’s … oh, it’s this way, I’m pretty sure.”

  As they entered the rooms of pretty Impressionist colours, floral landscapes and beach scenes, thronged by many tourists, Henry worried that he’d made the wrong improvisatory choice. The pictures were too sweet, too enjoyable, and García would think he was simple-minded. There was nothing profound about pain and the human condition here. For this reason, a smaller, starker painting caught his eye.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said. They approached a depiction of Paris under snow, whites and greys, winter light, an elegant, urban emptiness. “I’ve always liked this painting. It has a purity to it.”

  “You don’t like people so much. Everything whited out.”

  “I don’t mean that. It has a starkness. It’s silent. That winter silence. Maybe I do mean that. And it’s modest. It doesn’t attract attention to itself so much. It’s real.”

  “Pissarro is always like that. Not theatrical.”

  “Exactly.”

  García leaned in to the painting, bringing his face within a few inches. With one hand, he held his throat. His eyes behind the large lenses flickered. The strange intimacy of seeing his naked eyes behind his glasses. He straightened again. “Very nice.”

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure.”

  “It’s very extreme, you, the character of Mike. It’s not easy, it won’t be easy, to build to that ending.”

  “I know. I see that.”

  “And the starvation. He must be very thin, like a spectre.”

  “Like a ghost. Exactly. It’s like he behaves like he dies in Iraq. He’s like the ghost of himself, haunting his old life in that apartment.”

  “That’s right. Good, good. There’s no courage, you understand, in what he does in the end.”

  “Because he’s already dead.”

  “So there’s no fear.” García scratched his forehead with four fingernails, reaching across with his elbow lifted high. “I have to go,” he said. “Back to the hotel. I have to go out.”

  “That’s a shame.” Henry felt unreasonably jealous, envious of whoever would have García’s company later. He wanted to stay with him. Everything was so close to his grasp. He was feeling relaxed with the great man. He said, “You know who you remind me of a bit, I don’t know if anyone has said this to you before, is Kubrick.”

  García shook his head. “People always want the familiar. It’s a mistake. One auteur with a beard and glasses is like another. ‘This film is 81/2 meets When Harry Met Sally.’ You know. Like this script, I know people will say this film is like Taxi Driver meets something or other. It is not. It is different. It is hard to deal with new things, so people want the same. The only thing that comes out looking the same is people’s shit.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”

  García laughed. “Oh, no. Not you. I’m not saying you. You just reminded me. I must go.”

  “Sure. I’ll show you out.”

  “No, no. You stay here with your white Paris.”

  “Fine. Well, it’s been a pleasure. I hope to hear from you soon.”

  “I know you do. Maybe I can make you happy. Maybe I can’t.”

  “You certainly can. The question is will you.”

  “That’s true. The question is will I.” García clapped Henry on the shoulder with a heavy, jolting hand. “See you, Henry.”

  *

  Henry dropped his satchel by the wall and kicked the door shut behind him with his heel. He went to put on some music, to open the balcony doors, to put on the kettle. The flat needed disturbance, energy. The stillness, the banal disarray of his possessions was disheartening. There was an intimation of failure caused simply by being him. He needed change, music, air. The flat was modern, built in the nineties, clean, spare, hard. Beneath the slight messiness, it took no deep impression of his presence. The bare floors, the white edges remained distinct, according to the architect’s design. Henry had bought the flat a few years ago, during the second season of The Grange when he was already contracted for the third and had real money coming in, a future. He couldn’t remember when he’d got the idea that he wanted to live in Docklands but he’d spoken of it to an estate agent and let the rest happen while his attention was mostly elsewhere, during a busy filming schedule. It involved a number of processes, visits, meetings, surveys, signatures, bank transfers, none of which on their own felt like buying a house but at the end of it all he had one.

  The flat served its function of separation. He was out of town, down along the widening river, in the new area of the money industries, gleaming towers of stacked offices, small squares with modern sculptures, chain restaurants and fitness centres. The wind rang around empty spaces and the curved iron of benches and railings. The Docklands was unlike the rest of London. Its appearance was anonymous, modular, global, financial. Henry liked this, although at times the inconvenience was annoying—the endless, halting drive up the Commercial Road to get in and out of town. And he was far from everybody else, from his friends in Clapham or Crouch End or Kentish Town. Still, where he was between Canary Wharf and Limehouse, he had the river path and the river, the river smell and wave sounds, the passing boats and the breadth of space looking across the water that could not be found elsewhere in the city. Standing on his balcony, he could relax into a primitive animal alertness, feeling the changing power of the wind, scanning the eastward distances. The place was lavish with light, flashing off the water and glass and metal. Evenings were colourful, buildings fading to sombre bronze then turning inside out with their lit interiors clear through the darkness.

  All that brilliant glare was to the left of his balcony. Opposite, on the other side of a small canal, were other flats, each with its own balcony. Gaunt cormorants visited the canal, and large loud gulls. His neighbours worked in the banks and investment companies nearby and were rarely in their flats during the day. They appeared on their balconies sometimes at the weekends, lingering over pastries and fruit with a determined show of leisure. Henry was an anomaly here. He looked at his neighbours and the people in their suits and skirts passing in and out of the tall buildings and thought them tedious and technical, interchangeable, and clearly mad in their commitment to the machine they served that gave them only those weekend breakfasts to enjoy. At times, though, he envied them their busyness, their scheduled hours and overtime, the clear shapes of their lives. Their working days began before Henry was awake, leaving him in sole occupancy of his building. He envied also the apparently direct proportion of effort and reward. His life was so dependent upon a casino of chances. Right now it depended upon the opinion, the smallest subjective whim, of Sally Lindholm and Miguel García.

  Today Henry had met Miguel García, one of the great film directors of the age. His neighbours might have heard of him—perhaps as the man who made that film with all the real sex—but they certainly wouldn’t recognize him. Henry was alone with
this significance and his sense impressions of the man himself, the solidity, the open chest, the tilted angle of his head, his hair sweeping his collar. In his bedroom, Henry stood in García’s attitude for a moment, chin up and feet planted, anchored, looking out at the world. Henry saw García’s slow, determined walk down Charing Cross Road, he saw his grimace of concentration as he looked at the Pissarro painting. Henry unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. The linen was stained in dark circles under the armpits. Henry sniffed: that sour reek of audition sweat, a distinctive odour of fear and effort. He threw it on his bedroom floor and put on a running top, swapped his trousers for shorts. He wanted to get back outside to release the day’s compressions, the balked energy, the compacted anger inside him. He felt as if his whole body wanted to shout. He shut his balcony doors again and drank a mug of water by the kitchen sink. He pushed his earphones back into his ears. This time they were connected to a runner’s mp3 player that sat in a special strap around his left bicep. He locked his door and shoved his keys deep into his pocket.

  On the Thames Path he joined other runners. There were always other runners here to fall in with, relentless A types taking a break in their money-making day to work on their cardio. They ran in talkative pairs or faster and alone, sweat-streaked, mouths open, eyes flatly processing information, disconnected and suffering. Henry set off on his usual route too quickly, an effect of his agitation, and soon burned through his jittery excess of energy. He arrived back at his building tired and heavy, feeling the bones in his legs quietly aching, jolted by the hard surface. The shower did a good job of removing the day, full force and as hot as he could stand it. Afterwards his skin felt tight and tender and new.

  He put on sweatpants and a t-shirt. With wet hair, he sat cross-legged on his sofa and ate a large bowl of cereal while watching TV on his laptop. Texts were coming on his phone. There were places he could go tonight, people to hang out with if he wanted to. But he didn’t want that. A call came in while he was eating, the word “Mum” showing on the screen. He couldn’t be bothered to deal with her today. He let the phone ring off. A minute later it throbbed with a voicemail that he wouldn’t listen to this evening either. He needed to curl into himself, to find comfort and darkness. He watched more TV and smoked a joint that had him sinking into the sofa, limbs full of slow and weighty vibration. He took his laptop with him to bed and watched some porn, a compilation of women giving handjobs. He liked it when he could see their breasts, when they looked directly into the camera and said encouraging and warmly insulting things. He liked it when they smiled. It all produced the familiar convulsion, a satisfaction, and the emptiness that preceded sleep.

  *

  Henry remade himself in the mornings. Simplicity. Light. Breath. Yoga. A glass of water. A shower. The process was delicate. He wanted to empty himself out, to meditate, to attune to the particular weather, to connect with the innocence of the day before the inner clamour started. Recently, this was becoming more and more difficult. He walked a fine line. Any small excess of feeling, a single anxious thought, could tip him over.

  He avoided media. News of a film, trailers for TV shows, interviews with actors could all hurt him with an envy that felt like cramp, like impotent anger at injustice. He knew that it was wrong, that seeing yet another photograph of Benedict Cumberbatch or Tom Hiddleston made no difference to anything, but he was helpless, particularly now when everything hung in the balance. The therapeutic platitudes, there is enough for everybody, rejoice in the success of others, were useless. No, he sealed himself from it all in the mornings. The world of entertainment, for everybody else, for his hardworking neighbours, a pleasure, a diversion, a variety of appealing products, was for him a jagged reality of familiar faces and gossip, of missed opportunities and others’ galling triumphs. He knew he shouldn’t think like that. Meditate on abundance, on loving-kindness.

  A day to get through. Another whole day of not knowing. Hanging in space between one world and another. What could he do? Make useless gestures with his arms? He could flap. There was no availing effort he could expend, any more than if he was waiting for the results of a medical test. Days to endure like this. It debilitates you, the weightlessness, the lack of grip. It wastes the muscles of the will.

  He drank green tea, sipping the warmth and mild flavour. Small sensations. Steadiness. Outside, the wind pushed low corrugations over the surface of the canal. Huddled clouds. Gulls striving through the air. The sound of a boat’s engine. From somewhere nearby, the beeping of a vehicle reversing. London: always grey, always worried, always working.

  Henry went to his piano to play for a while. A new purchase—Henry had had the piano delivered when The Grange ended, knowing that there would be hours to fill. An expensive, glossy upright, it had a ringing sound that Henry could punch out in big gusts and feel that release or could make sing softly. A good piano for Mozart, it articulated clearly. On the top was a pile of sheet music. The physical action of sifting through them for something to play was so familiar, and the scores themselves, the antique fonts and black borders and elaborates cartouches, brought back the many hours of childhood practice and reminded him: he had a voicemail from his mother. He might as well get it out of the way now.

  He collected his phone from his bedside table and took it to the sofa. He sat down with one leg up on the seat, leaning back against the armrest, a posture of relaxation unconsciously adopted, meant to forestall any agitation. There had been no other messages overnight, nothing from his agent. His mother’s voice began quietly, as always. He could see her sitting in the green armchair in front of the wall of bookshelves, his father dimly, annoyingly, present in some other part of the house, or out in the garden, out of earshot. Or perhaps that was him playing on the home piano rather than the radio playing.

  “This is a message for Henry.” Always this tautologous opening, as though after hearing Henry’s recorded voice she thought that someone else might be listening. The uncertainty, the hesitancy, was important, though; it expressed the sense of threat she felt from technology and suggested the unpredictable organization of Henry’s life. Who knew who was there and using his phone? “Call me back when you get a chance. I know your father would love to hear from you. You should call him. Okay then. Bye for now.”

  A short message. They had become shorter in response to Henry’s perfunctory responses. At some point he would have to deal with this nonsense about his father’s script but Henry still hoped that they would eventually see sense and give up.

  Sitting on the sofa, deleting his mother’s message, Henry was determined to remake this connection and also felt sure that he could sort out the situation with his parents. Both of these thoughts were forgotten two hours later when Carol rang him to tell him that he’d been cast as the lead in Miguel García’s next film.

  *

  The flat was too small to contain him. He had to go out. He texted Rob, who was in a Pinter in the West End. They met after the show, Rob’s eye sockets still reddened by the astringency of makeup remover. He hugged Henry. “Mate,” he said. His voice was rough and resonant, his gestures large and flowing, still scaled up to fill an auditorium. He gripped Henry’s biceps and looked affectionately into his face. “Been a while. Shall we go and do a thing?”

  “Let’s do it. Let’s ride your perf high.”

  They started in the yellow and brown light, the wood panels and intricate cut glass of a pub. A couple of the other members of the cast went with them. They drank beers in the private centre of the small stir they made with celebrity and good looks. Years before, Rob and Henry had been in the Royal Shakespeare Company together, a long season in Stratford-upon-Avon of the history plays. In that small town along its pretty river, a place numb with gentility and heritage conservation, devoid of anything to do in the wet darkness of autumn, a darkness that began at five o’clock, they entertained each other, partying hard. The derangement became ritual. They were committed to a p
articular recipe, vodka and cocaine, which they called, for reasons Henry couldn’t remember, dog oil and dog powder. They travelled a long way into each other’s madness in those months of raw escapade, blasting histrionic talk at each other in the weak light of dawn. They knew each other like houses they had ransacked. It left them no choice but to love each other. Now they met infrequently but they both knew they could rely on the other to go out and get messed up at a word of instigation. They were soldiers.

  At the pub, Henry gave Rob his news.

  “You fuck,” Rob said. He punched him in the chest. “That’s amazing.”

  “I know,” Henry said. “Fucking A.”

  “Wow,” Rob said. “Jesus.” He leaned back and scrutinized Henry as though he might be lying, as though struggling to get him in focus. Henry sat still, grinning. “Just wow.”

  “I know. It’s big.”

  “Why did I just buy you a drink? Your round, surely?”

  “I’ll buy you two, if you want.”

  After closing time, they moved to the blue light and ranks of glowing bottles in a bar. After that, Henry suggested Shoreditch House. There they decided to drink single malts and to make toasts in Scottish accents that became Irish accents and Irish toasts after Henry used the phrase “the old country.” A girl attached herself to Henry, one of the crowd that had come from the theatre. One of the club members was, strangely enough, from Rob’s tiny hometown, now working in online something or other. They talked with animated nostalgia. The girl was pretty and required little attention. She sat next to Henry and they established that they would go home together with the pressure of thighs pressed together and later hands mingled below the tabletop and then one slow, binding look into each other’s eyes. From then on they kept their secret and did nothing to endanger the arrangement, barely addressing one another. Rob was good company. Rob had many anecdotes, as everyone did when they were in a show. The whisky made Henry sentimental. Old friends, the old country. He missed them with a drunk’s sudden plangent emotion. He went up onto the roof to smoke a cigarette among the other smokers. He exhaled up into the sky. The girl—her name was Nikki—appeared beside him and laid her head on his shoulder.