“They’re excellent legs.”
She lifted one off the bed and examined it critically. “They’re not bad.”
“They’ll do,” I said.
So then she had used the letterheaded stationery of the defunct radio station to land herself a job with a real radio station in Australia. “It was cheeky, really,” she said, “because I didn’t know the first thing about radio. I got away with it, though.”
“Legs again?”
She nodded. “Legs again. God knows what would have happened if I’d been ugly.” She thought about that for a time, then frowned.
“I’ve always resented the looks, in a way. I mean, you’re never sure whether they want you for your looks or abilities. Do you know what I mean?”
“It’s a problem I have all the time,” I said, and she laughed, but I was thinking that her passionate drive to make a good film must have been part of her answer to that question. She desperately wanted to prove that her abilities could match those of a clever and ugly person.
Not that Angela had ever been coy about using her good looks.
She’d moved from the radio station to its parent TV company, and it was there that she had met Anthony Bannister who had been filming in Australia. He had promised her a job on his programme if she should ever return to England. “So I came back.”
“Just for him?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to work in English television. I wanted to come home.”
“And Bannister was the price?”
She looked at me. “I like him, Nick. Truly.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She stubbed out the cigarette then rolled on to my left arm. I held her against me and she crooked her left leg over mine. “He’s like me, in some ways.”
“He’s got good legs?” I asked in astonishment.
“He’s so vulnerable. He’s very good at his job, but he doesn’t have any confidence outside of it. Have you noticed that? So he wears his success like a mask.”
“He’s weak,” I said.
“It’s easy for you to say that. You’re strong.”
“You should see me in telephone boxes. There’s nothing but a blur, then I reappear with my underpants outside my trousers.” She laughed softly. “Tony doesn’t think anyone likes him. That’s why he tries to be nice to everyone. People think he’s so successful and confident, but all the time he’s frightened and he’ll always agree with what any opinionated person says because he thinks that will make them like him. That’s what makes him good on the telly, I think. He draws people out, you see. And he’s very good-looking.” She added the last in a rather defensive voice.
“He’s spreading round the waist,” I said idly.
“He won’t exercise. He’s always buying the equipment, but he never uses it.”
“Was he married when you met?”
She nodded, but said nothing more.
We lay quietly for a while, listening to the rain. I pulled a strand of her long hair across my chest. “Will you marry him?” I asked.
“If he wants me to, yes.”
“Will he?”
“I think so.” She fingered the scar on my shoulder. She had very long thin fingers. “He’d prefer someone like Melissa, someone with social acceptance, but he may settle for me. I’m efficient, you see, which is good for his career. I think he’s frightened he might lose me to a rival programme.”
“Do you love him?”
She appeared to think about it, then shook her head.
“Then why marry him?”
“Because…” She fell silent again.
“Why?” I insisted.
“Because he can be good company.” She spoke very slowly, like a child rehearsing a difficult lesson. “Because he’s very successful.
Because I can give him confidence when he meets people who he thinks despise him. He thinks you despise him.”
“Maybe that’s because he’s despicable?”
She pulled a hair out of my chest in punishment. “He’s not despicable. He’s insecure and he’s only confident when the television cameras are pointing at him.”
“You’ll have a wonderful marriage,” I said sourly, “with the bloody cameras following you around.”
“And perhaps I can change him,” she said. “He’d like to be more like you.”
“Poor?”
“He envies you. He wishes he’d been a soldier.”
“Good God.” I lay in great contentment, my left hand stroking her naked back.
“That’s why he likes Fanny, I think,” Angela said. “Fanny’s tough.”
“That’s true.”
“And if tough people respect him, Tony feels tough himself.” She shrugged. “Perhaps, in time, and if enough people offer him acceptance, he will become strong?”
It seemed a rum recipe to me. “You’re strong,” I said.
“I don’t cry very often,” she said, “and I don’t like it when I do.” She lay silent for a few moments. Gulls were calling harshly on the river. “There’s something else about Tony,” she went on. “He doesn’t have close friends. He’d like to have one really close friend.
Not me, not any woman, just some man he could be totally honest with.”
“Friends are harder to find than lovers,” I said.
“Do you have friends, Nick?”
“Yes.” I thought about it for a second. “Lots.”
“He doesn’t. Nor do I, really. So, yes, I’ll marry him because it will make me feel safe.”
“Safe?”
Angela raised her face and kissed my cheek. “Safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m tired of being chased by men. Now, because people know that I belong to Tony, they don’t try.”
“Belong?”
“He’s very possessive.” She said it in a slightly apologetic tone, then lay staring at the ceiling for a moment. “He wants me to give up my job if we marry.”
“Would you?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to other people if I didn’t, would it? I mean, they’d say I got all the best jobs because I was Tony’s wife.” I reflected that people must already be thinking that, wedding ring or no.
She shrugged. “And I’d never have any more money worries, would I? And I’d get this house, and I could see you whenever you sailed Sycorax back to the wharf. That wouldn’t be bad, would it?” It was a long way, I thought, from a semi-detached Baptist minister’s house in the Midlands to a mansion above a Devon river. “It might not be bad,” I said, “but would it be good?”
“That’s a romantic’s question.”
“I’m a romantic. I’m in love with love.”
“More fool you.” She wriggled herself into comfort against me as the wind slapped rain at the window. It was a north wind and I imagined the small yachts beating hard towards shelter through the bucking waves at the river’s bar. Angela was still thinking of love and its dishonest shifts. “Tony isn’t faithful to me, but I’m not to him any longer, am I?”
“Would he be angry about this?”
She nodded. “He’d be horribly angry. And hurt. He’s unfaithful to me all the time, but he never thinks that it might hurt me.” She shrugged. “He has a terrible pride. Terrible. That’s why I think he might ask me to marry him.”
“Because he thinks you’ll stay faithful to him?”
“And because I’m decorative.” She twisted her head to see if I thought her immodest.
I kissed her forehead. “You’re very decorative. The very first moment that I saw you, I thought how decorative you were. It was lust at first sight.”
“Was it?” She surprised me by sounding surprised.
“Yes,” I said gently. “It was.”
She smiled. “You were very gaunt and frightening. I remember being very defensive. I didn’t think I was going to like you, and I was sure you were going to hate me.”
“I was just fancying you,” I said, “but I was nervous of you. I thought television people would be much too clever and glamorous.”