"You found a jar, you filled it with water, you put the orchids in the water. So. And what were your feelings while you did this? You were impressed? Excited?"
His question somehow caught her on the wrong foot. "I just got on with the show," she said, and giggled without meaning to. "Waited to see who turned up."
They had stopped for traffic lights. The stillness made a new intimacy.
"And the ‘I love you'?" he asked.
"That's theatre, isn't it? Everybody loves everybody, some of the time. I liked the ‘infinitely,' though. That was class."
The lights changed and they were driving again.
"You did not consider looking at the audience in case you saw anyone you recognised?"
"There wasn't time."
"And in the interval?"
"In the interval, I peeked, but I didn't see anyone I knew."
"And after the show, what did you do?"
"Returned to my dressing-room, changed, hung around a bit. Thought, sod it; went home."
"Home being the Astral Commercial Hotel, near the railway station."
She had long ago lost her capacity to be surprised by him. "The Astral Commercial and Private Hotel," she agreed. "Near the railway station."
"And the orchids?"
"Went with me to the hotel."
"You did not, however, ask Mr. Lemon the caretaker for a description of the person who had brought them?"
"Next day I did. Not the same night, no."
"And what answer did you obtain from Lemon when you did ask him?"
"He said a foreign gent but respectable. I asked what age; he leered and said just right. I tried to think of a foreign M but couldn't."
"Not in your whole private menagerie, one single foreign M? You disappoint me."
"Not a one."
Briefly, they both smiled, though not at each other.
"So, Charlie. We now have day two, a Saturday matinée followed by the evening performance, as usual--
"And you were there, weren't you, bless you? Out there in the middle of the front row in your nice red blazer, surrounded by sticky school kids all coughing and wanting the loo."
Irritated by her levity, he devoted his attention to the road for a while, and when he resumed his line of questioning, it had a pointed earnestness that made his eyebrows come together in a schoolmasterly frown. "I wish you please to describe to me your feelings exactly, Charlie. It is mid-afternoon, the hall is in a half daylight owing to the poor curtains, we are sitting less in a theatre, I would say, than in a large classroom. I am in the front row; I have a decidedly foreign look, a foreign manner somehow, foreign clothes; I am extremely conspicuous among the children. You have Lemon's description of me, and furthermore, I do not take my eyes off you. Do you not suspect at any point that I am the giver of the orchids, the strange man signed M who claims to love you infinitely?"
"Of course I did. I knew."
"How? Did you check with Lemon?"
"I didn't need to. I just knew. I saw you there, mooning at me, and I thought, hullo, it's you. Whoever you are. Then when the curtain went down for the end of the matinée,and you stayed put in your seat and produced your ticket for the next performance--
"How did you know I did that? Who told you?"
And you're that sort too, she thought, adding one more hard-earned recognition of him to her album: when you get what you want, you turn all male and suspicious.
"You said it yourself. It's a small company in a one-horse theatre. We don't get many orchids--about one bunch per decade is average--and we don't get many punters staying to see the show round a second time." She could not resist the question. "Was it a bore, Jose? The show--actually? Twice running like that? Or did you quite enjoy it now and then?"
"It was the most monotonous day of my life," he replied without a second's hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and reformed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. "As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent," he said.
This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. "Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I'll die here."
And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb.
The road was straight but pot-holed; hills and trees to either side were powdered with moondust from a cement works. They were in their own capsule, where the nearness of other moving things only made their world more private. She was coming to him all over again, in her mind and in his story. She was a soldier's girl, learning to be a soldier.
"So tell me, please. Apart from the orchids, did you receive any other gifts while you were playing at the Barrie Theatre?"
"The box," she said with a shudder, before she had even made a show of pondering.
"What box, please?"
She had expected the question and already she was acting out her distaste for him, believing it was what he wanted. "It was some kind of trick. Some creep sent me a box to the theatre. Registered, special delivery."
"When was this?"
"Saturday. The same day you came to the matinée and stayed."
"And what was in the box?"
"Nothing. It was an empty jeweller's box. Registered and empty."
"How very strange. And the label--the label on the parcel? Did you examine it?"
"It was written in blue ballpoint. Capitals."
"But if it was registered, there must have been a sender also."
"Illegible. Looked like Marden. Could have been Hordern. Some local hotel."
"Where did you open it?"
"In my dressing-room between performances."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"And what did you make of it?"
"I thought it was someone having a go at me because of my politics. It's happened before. Filthy letters. Nigger-lover. Commie pacifist. A stink-bomb through my dressing-room window. I thought it was them."
"Did you not associate the empty box with the orchids in some way?"
"Jose, I liked the orchids! I liked you"
He had stopped the car. Some laybye in the middle of an industrial estate. Lorries were thundering past. For a moment she thought he might turn the world upside down and grab her, so paradoxical and erratic was the tension in her. But he didn't. Instead, reaching into the door pocket beside him, he handed her a reinforced registered envelope with sealing wax on the flap and a hard square shape inside it, a replica of the one she had received that day. Postmark Nottingham, the twenty-fifth of June. On the front, her name and the address of the Barrie Theatre done in blue ballpoint. On the back, the sender's scrawl as before.
"Now we make the fiction," Joseph announced quietly while she slowly turned the envelope over. "On the old reality we impose the new fiction."
Too close to him to trust herself, she did not answer.
"The day has been hectic, as the day was. You are in your dressing-room, between performances. The parcel, still unopened, is awaiting you. You have how long before you are due on stage again?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe less."
"Very well. Now open the parcel."
She stole a glance at him but he was staring hard ahead at the enemy horizon. She looked down at the envelope, glanced at him again, shoved a finger into the flap, and wrenched it open. The same red jeweller's box, but heavier. Small white envelope, unsealed, plain white card within. To Joan, spirit of my freedom, she read. You are fantastic. I love you! The handwriting unmistakable. But instead of "M," the signature "Michel," written large, with the final "1" turned backward in a tail to underline the importance of the name. She shook the box and felt a soft, exhilarating thud from inside.
"My teeth," she said facetiously, but she did not succeed in destroying the tension inside herself, or him. "Do I open it? What is it?"
"How should I know? Do as you would do."
She lifted the lid. A thick gold bracelet, mounted with blue stones, nestled in the satin lining.
"Jesus," she said softly, and closed the box with a snap. "What do I have to do to earn that!"