Read Online Equivocator by Stevie Davies - Free Book Online

you ask for.’
    â€˜Yes, I will bring Jesse. Yes. Thank you.’ I half-choke on the words. ‘If he’ll come. Because we’re going through a bad patch. I hope it’s only a patch. It’s certainly bad. All my fault. Jesse is such a lovely man, Elise, I know you’ll take to him.’
    â€˜Do you remember,’ she asks, ‘when you were in the school play, at Radshead? You were, if memory serves, a member of the Chorus of Virgins in Elektra . Now, which was it, Aeschylus or Sophocles? There are two plays of that name. Whichever it was, the adolescent lad they cast as Elektra did a lot of caterwauling. You’ve heard of howler monkeys? His was a very screeching performance.’
    â€˜Sophocles, I think,’ I said, my heart sinking. We are off on a tour of the Ancient Greeks: I’ll be powerless to arrest or divert the flow.
    â€˜Of course,’ Elise adds, rearranging the cushions behind her back on the couch, and giving the impression of settling in for a nice long literary chat, ‘Euripides parodied Aeschylus’s Elektra , didn’t he? Something to do with a fawn. But actually I think this must have been Sophocles after all.’
    Go with it, I tell myself, gritting my teeth. In this way we might eventually drift back on to the true path. Or not.
    â€˜So anyway,’ Elise goes on. ‘I’d driven like a demon and been flagged down by the police somewhere in Kent. Now where was it? Broadstairs? I made it just in time to see you in your nice little skirt sashay on to the stage with the other virgins to advise Elektra not to waste her life in mourning. Would it bring her father back? No. And did Elektra take the slightest notice? Of course not. We don’t, do we?’
    â€˜No, Elise, mostly we don’t.’
    â€˜We’re always walking forward looking backwards, aren’t we, Seb? But what I was going to say was: there seemed to be a bunch of mad boys in charge of the lighting. Things would get so dark that you could hardly make out which actor was doing what. And then these delirious light-boys would shoot the dimmers up. The audience was in stitches. It was the most hilarious tragedy I’ve ever attended. I expect you wonder where all this is going, don’t you?’ she asks with a look of amusement. ‘Well, when I was going through my papers, the mad boys threw up the dimmers.’
    â€˜They did?’
    â€˜Yes. In my memory. Keep up now, Sebastian.’
    â€˜Right. Sorry.’
    â€˜ Jack’s old chum. You were asking about him.’
    â€˜But not if it upsets you to talk about it, Elise. Really.’
    â€˜No – can’t say it upsets me. A long, long time ago. Poor chap, such an empty vessel. Isn’t it funny the way these schoolboys don’t grow up? They just couldn’t let go of each other. Oh, they tried – but when one ran away, the other was haring off after him. Talk about there being three of us in that marriage. And then again they were often at each other’s throats. Quite literally.’
    â€˜But – Elise – how painful for you.’
    â€˜I minded, Sebastian. And I didn’t. I had my freedom and space. I’ve always been self-sufficient – as you know – to your cost, doubtless.’ And it’s her turn to look shifty and pleading.
    â€˜No, Elise. No. You’ve been –‘. I bite my tongue to stop myself trotting out the cliché about good mothers. You couldn’t be called a good mother, or even a good enough mother, I think. But you were mine, Elise; and you were there. And you are still here, still mine. And I wonder if she feels the forgiveness flowing in waves from me to her, and the gratitude. I’ve never called her Mum, let alone Mummy. She has always been her indivisible self. And somehow there are irrational tears in my eyes and I don’t know what to do with the arms that long to cwtch her.
    â€˜Anyway. Thing