She saw Lazlo before he saw her. He was in black, with a brilliant turquoise-blue scarf looped round his neck, and for a moment, she thought – indignantly, as if he had no business to be so – that he looked almost attractive. She waved. It took him some time to see her and when he did, he only gave the smallest of smiles.
‘I hope you haven’t been waiting—’
She indicated her glass.
‘I needed a drink’.
He dropped a black canvas rucksack under the metal table.
‘Can I get you another?’
‘Thanks,’ Rosa said. ‘Vodka and tonic’.
He nodded and went off to the bar. She wondered if he had enough money to pay for their drinks and then reflected, rather grimly, that she hardly had, either. But Lazlo would be on the minimum Equity wage, and as he wouldn’t, like everyone else, be legally entitled to an adult wage until he was twenty-five, that would be the barest minimum.
When he came back with her vodka and a bottle of beer, she said, rather shortly, ‘Sorry. I should have paid for those’.
‘No, you shouldn’t’.
‘I asked you for a drink’.
He shrugged.
She added, ‘And now you’ll think I’m even more spoilt’. He hitched himself on to the stool opposite her. He said quietly, ‘It wasn’t about that. I shouldn’t have said it anyway’.
‘Why not, if it’s true?’
He picked up his beer bottle.
‘It isn’t the kind of thing you ought to say to anyone twenty minutes after meeting them’.
‘OK,’ Rosa said. She raised her glass. ‘Cheers’. He tipped his bottle towards her. She said, ‘Well, what did you mean?’ ‘Please forget it—’
‘I meant not to mention it but now I have and I’d like an answer. What did you mean?’
He hunched forward over the table. He looked weirdly glamorous. Perhaps it was the exoticism of the scarf. It was made of silk, the kind of rough silk that came from somewhere in the Far East.
‘I’d really rather—’ ‘Lazlo,’ Rosa said, ‘please’. He gave her a quick glance.
‘Well, I suppose I just thought you – you gave the impression of taking things for granted’.
‘What things?’
He shrugged.
Your mother. Your parents. Having a home, somewhere to go to’.
Rosa put her hands in her lap. She looked directly at him.
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not really. Not like that’.
‘Haven’t you got parents?’
‘My father lives in Arizona. My mother married a Russian and they have two children and live in Paris. My sister is a medical student, nearly a doctor, and she lives in hospital accommodation’.
‘And you?’
Lazlo looked sheepish.
‘This is turning into a sort of pathetic Dickens-style sob story—’
‘Where do you live?’ Rosa said. ‘In a room—’
‘Where?’ ‘Maida Vale’. ‘Well, that’s—’
‘Kilburn, actually,’ Lazlo said. ‘In a room in a house belonging to my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s grandmother’. Rosa leaned forward.
‘Why?’
‘Because she charges me almost nothing because she likes having a man in the house. She’s panicked about security’.
‘Is it awful?’
Lazlo was silent. ‘Depressing?’ Rosa said.
‘Well,’ Lazlo said, ‘I don’t have hang-ups about old people, but this is pretty extreme. She won’t ever open the windows’.
Rosa took a swallow of her drink.
‘Does it smell?’
Lazlo nodded.
‘So when this play is on, you’ll be travelling from Kilburn to Islington?’
‘Lots of people do,’ Lazlo said. ‘Theatre people all have to live in awkward places’.
‘Theatre people,’ Rosa said mockingly.
He flushed.
‘I am one,’ he said, ‘I’m an actor. So is your mother. I don’t know why you feel the need to sneer’. ‘I’m not sneering—’ ‘Well, that’s what it sounds like’. ‘Sorry’.
‘OK’.
‘I am sorry,’ Rosa said. ‘Truly’.
Lazlo said nothing.
‘Please,’ Rosa said, ‘I am truly sorry’.
He looked up slowly.
‘I believe in it,’ he said.
‘The theatre?’
‘In acting,’ Lazlo said seriously. ‘In – in its radiant energy. In being possessed, and passionate, yet still yourself after a performance. I like having to concentrate this way, I like having chosen something so difficult it makes me display fortitude’.
‘Well,’ Rosa said, ‘I certainly hadn’t thought of any of that’.
‘You didn’t listen to your mother’.
‘My mother never said anything like that in all her life’.
‘She didn’t need to,’ Lazlo said vehemently. ‘She didn’t need to say it. If you’d ever taken her acting seriously, you’d have seen it’.
Rosa said nothing. She fidgeted with her glass. Rising up in her, unwanted but not to be denied, was a peculiar wish to say sorry again somehow, to show herself in a better light.
She said slowly, ‘Your room. Your room in Kilburn—’ He looked irritated, as if dragged back to banality from something much more compelling and important.
‘What about it?’
‘Have you told my mother?’
‘What?’
‘Have you told my mother,’ Rosa said, ‘about how you have to live?’
Chapter Ten
‘I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ Russell said from the doorway.
Matthew was standing by the window of his old bedroom, looking down into the garden. His cases, all very orderly, were on the floor. He had his hands in his pockets and the set of his shoulders from behind was not one that Russell could deduce anything from.
He looked at the walls. Edie had not removed a single childhood picture.
‘Of course,’ Russell said, ‘you can change anything you want to. No need to live with Manchester United 1990’.
Matthew said, without turning, ‘I don’t mind’.
Russell said, ‘I am so very sorry about what’s happened’.
‘Thanks’.
‘Anything we can—’
‘It’s much harder than I thought it’d be,’ Matthew said. ‘Emptier’.
‘Yes’.
Matthew turned. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for days.
‘When you go back somewhere, it’s not the same—’ ‘Or perhaps,’ Russell said, ‘you aren’t’. Matthew looked at the bed. ‘I haven’t slept in that for nearly seven years’. Russell moved into the room and put his hands on Matthew’s shoulders.
‘Poor Matthew. Poor old man—’ Matthew shook his head. ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful—’ ‘I know’.
‘I just feel – such a bloody failure—’ ‘Try not to. Things are much harder now’.
‘Are they?’
‘I think so. We were stifled by too little choice, you are panicked by too much’. Matthew looked round the room. Russell said gently, ‘You don’t want to be here—’
‘I thought I did’.
‘Maybe it won’t be for long. You have a job, after all’. Matthew nodded. He pulled a face. ‘Flat sharing—’ ‘Perhaps’.
‘Hard,’ Matthew said, ‘to go back to’. ‘Harder than this?’ Matthew nodded. ‘For the moment’.
Russell took his hands away. He said, ‘Sorry, old son, but we do have to talk about money’. Matthew looked puzzled. ‘Money’.