The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [122]
“Newstead Abbey.” Norval took a sip of the coffee and winced. “At the restaurant, I forget what it’s called. The one with the doilies and vomitgreen rug and squawking peacocks outside …”
Teresa laughed. “The Buttery.”
“Where I was abysmally drunk by three in the afternoon, much more than now, and semi-suicidal amidst the peacocks. Did I mention the peacocks?”
“Semi-suicidal?”
“I’m an actor, in a manner of speaking. A very loose manner. I was supposed to be in a play that was cancelled.”
“In Nottingham? At the Playhouse? Theatre Royal?”
“No, at a library that someone burned down a few days before we arrived. Wish they’d told us. Wish they’d paid us.”
Teresa laughed again, showing her beautiful white teeth. “I’m sorry, I suppose it’s not very funny. Which play were you doing?”
“Tartuffe.”
“Molière?”
Norval nodded. “In French too—a harebrained government project that wouldn’t have drawn more than four people, including the ushers and janitor. Anyway, as I’m having a …” Here Norval reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cardboard beer mat. “… a ‘Worthington Creamflow Bitter,’ Gally sticks his head through the window and scares the living shit out of me.”
Teresa grinned. “Why would he do that? Oh, I see, he was replacing it.”
“There was no glass in the window but I hadn’t even noticed. So we start chatting. And then he offers me another …” Norval’s hands patted all pockets.
“Worthington Creamflow Bitter,” said Teresa.
“Correct. Anyway, as he leaves he gives me your mom’s address. Along with his card and the name of a film company he used to work for. Where, by some miracle, I got a job today.” Norval held up his script. “Well, not a miracle exactly. The guy who originally got the part is now at Queen’s.”
“The hospital?”
“After doing some very strong drugs, he did a perfect jackknife into an empty swimming pool.”
Teresa winced, then crawled back into bed with her boots on. “Congratulations,” she said before washing down a handful of pills with liquid from an amber bottle. “I guess.” Awkward seconds ticked by. Norval sipped his Maxwell House, glanced at her hair. Was it razed in the name of fashion, he wondered, or because of something more sinister? He began leafing through his script. Scarlet and black wounds burst on the proud flesh. Life’s own colours darken, dance and divide …
“Who is Gally exactly?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, what’s his connection with your mom?”
Teresa took a long haul on her cigarette. “He wanted to marry her— until, that is, he found out she was pregnant. With me. Then he changed his mind. At least that’s Mom’s version. I have another.”
“Which is?”
“Well, Gally is … Trinidadian, East Asian. At the time, for my mother— and her family in particular—that was a problem. Anyway, they haven’t spoken to each other since his own wedding day over twenty years ago. My mom’s never gotten over it—it’s been like a canker, eating away at her daily.”
“Because she was in love with him?”
Teresa nodded, tapped ash into a mug filled with cigarettes. “She was seeing two men at the time—Gally and my dad—but she loved only one. Gally. But my dad was a persuasive character, shall we say, and somehow made love to her without … you know, protection. She’s never gotten over the shame or guilt. So after divorcing my dad she turned the place into a B & B. And she’s been cleaning ever since—spraying, airing things out, condomising the place.”
Norval tried to smile but no smile came, a strange sadness raining down on him. He looked around the squalorous room. “I take it she’s not allowed in here.”
Teresa laughed. “I rebelled long ago. But she’s doing it—the war on germs, I mean—for my sake too. I’ve been sick for a long time. It’s funny, it’s like the boy who cried wolf. When I was young she always insisted I was sick, taking me to the doctor’s and to hospitals when nothing was wrong with me. And now … Anyway, you must think she’s mad as a hatter,53 not to mention a redneck, but she’s all right, really. Generous, thoughtful, do anything for me.”
“She’s done a lot