The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [573]
During all that part Matthew had not been too bad: he had only begun to fidget during the scenes when the strict sort of headmistress who ran the ballet was being beastly to Vivien Leigh who wanted to flirt with Robert Taylor who had not had to go to France after all, but then he had had to go before they had time to get married. Matthew had fidgeted worse and worse during the scene in the Candlelight Club with all the violins when they danced to the ‘Farewell Waltz’ which sounded very like ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and worse still during the scene where Vivien Leigh, who had been sacked from the ballet and had run out of money, read in the paper that he had been killed, while she was waiting in the Ritz to have tea with his mother, Lady Margaret, who turned up late and found her drunk.
‘Are you sure you want to stay for the rest?’ Matthew had asked suddenly in a loud voice at about the time when Vivien Leigh had started hanging around Waterloo Station saying things like ‘hello’ and ‘welcome home’ to soldiers. It was at that moment that Melanie had asked him to be quiet, she was trying to concentrate, and a man in the row in front had said shush. Kate had turned once or twice to look at Matthew after that. He had sunk very low in his seat with his shoulders to his ears: she could tell by the light from the screen that he was unhappy.
Meanwhile, Vivien Leigh was getting more and more unhappy, too, and spending more and more time with her beret and handbag and high heels saying hello to soldiers even though it did not seem to agree with her. There was something wrong, that was obvious, but what was it? Kate had no idea but could not bring herself to ask Melanie. And when Robert Taylor had suddenly appeared again at the station with some other soldiers she was about to say hello to, instead of looking pleased to see him she had looked quite upset and had said: ‘Oh Roy, you’re alive,’ and gone on acting in the same peculiar way. Even Robert Taylor did not seem to know what ailed her. He had taken her up to his castle in Scotland, and she had got on quite well this time with Lady Margaret and they were going to be married, but she still had moments of being peculiar and finally she had told Lady Margaret, who had become very understanding, that she had something to confess though without saying what it was. But Lady Margaret had seemed to guess (which was more than Kate could!) and said something like ‘Oh my poor child’ and then had seemed to agree that she should run away to London again which she did and then threw herself under a lorry on Waterloo Bridge and that was the end apart from some moping by Robert Taylor on Waterloo Bridge. Still, Kate, though she had not understood it, had found it a shattering experience. She only wished that Melanie had not been quite such a bully with Matthew. At the same time, in some strange way, a part of Kate did know what the film was about … the explanation, she knew, lay just below the surface of her mind, and when she uncovered it, it would seem perfectly familiar.
But now they had reached Melanie’s house on Nassim Road. Matthew would have driven up the drive and into this Langfield stronghold like some innocent wayfarer straying into a robber’s den, had not Kate had her wits about her and stopped him at the gate. Melanie gabbled a quick formula of thanks at Matthew, turned her bright, beady eyes on Kate for a moment and then bolted up the drive. Kate somehow knew that if their visit to the cinema were discovered Melanie would be ready