She’s not going to answer, I can tell.
Not yet anyway.
And there’s no doubt in my mind any more that she at least is one hundred per cent treating this as a therapy session.
I don’t mind though.
I’m not upset with her.
Just increasingly grateful, really, really grateful actually, that she – who was on the edge of her seat for me when I got my first BAFTA, and listened to me as a child,heardme back then–still cares enough about me that, at the age of ninety-three, she’s invited me into her home so that she can try again to help me.
Outside, the rain grows heavier, drumming against the windows.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she says, at length.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Everything.’
‘Can you give me something specific?’ she asks.
So, I do.
I give her my father’s theatre.
‘I miss him,’ said Clare, staring down at her pile of cards, holding Hans’s ring in her fist. ‘None of these are from him, I can’t feel him at all, and I miss him so much.’
‘Oh, Clare,’ said Iris. She was in bed, feeling nauseous, and failing to sleep. The workmen downstairs were making theirusual stop-start racket, waking her every time she came close to drifting off. ‘He could still be here, missing you too.’
‘He’s not here.’ She pressed his ring to her chest. ‘But I do believe I’ll see him again.’ She tipped her head back against the eaves. ‘Perhaps I might not even have that long a wait.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Iris uneasily.
‘Do you remember when we talked about us all having been here before?’
‘Yes,’ said Iris, edgier yet. She still often thought of her non-fall down the stairs – every time, in fact, that she felt that returning presence within her, filling her with an urgency, to do what, she only wished she could guess – and didn’t at all like what she now realised Clare was saying. ‘It was a rumination, Clare. An idea … ’
‘It’s become more than that to me,’ said Clare. ‘I really don’t think any of this is final.’ She looked to the rain-drenched window. ‘I’m sure it’s just an act, in an endlessly repeating play.’
‘A long act, let’s hope,’ said Iris, sitting up now, hating the finality in her friend’s tone.
‘I suspect that’s already decided,’ Clare replied, in the same accepting way. ‘But the end doesn’t scare me, not if it takes us back to our beginning.’ Her cheeks moved in a smile. ‘I want that. Even with all the pain, it helps, believing Hans and I will find one another again. Have our time again.’ Her voice scratched with emotion. ‘I need to believe that’s all waiting.’
‘Clare, you don’t know he’s gone … ’
‘He is.’
‘You can’t give up.’
‘I don’t want to … ’
‘Then don’t. Sleep instead. You’re exhausted.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ said Clare, turning again to the window, frowning at the rain outside.
‘Try at least.’
‘There’s no point,’ said Clare.
Then, ‘I think maybe I’ll go for a walk.’
