Tension and Tenderness

by Richard Armstrong

Something funny was going on in 1989. Around the end of June there was a screening of Double Indemnity at the National Film Theatre. Hurrying down to the South Bank, I came to feel that the events of the following day were mysteriously unleashed that night. Double Indemnity was still the squalid and irrevocable encounter between a wayward woman and an entranced man that it had always been. But Monday was not as other Mondays had been. It was different, and somehow more. I went along to Covent Garden for a writing workshop at which I hoped to pick up some useful habits. Evelyn came in late, sat next to me in the furthest corner of the room, and scarcely left my side until Friday when we agreed to meet for dinner. And what a woman to meet! Her intelligent brown eyes magnified by the big round Bettaspecs lenses that were so popular then, I glimpsed Hebraic genes in her pale skin and high cheekbones, her chestnut hair forming a ponytail that caressed her neck. As she sat down, how was I to know what love can bring to light.

But however tightly I held her outside Hampstead tube station, she knew it couldn't last. Why could I not see? I told her I loved her. Whenever we met, she would take me to the darkest, loneliest part of the pub. For hours she would divulge everything and nothing in a husky whisper I can still hear a century on, tapping my knee with her foot if anyone looked over or came near. Our meetings had a crazy film-historical logic. It had been exceptionally hot in London that summer and I was the film noir male caught in its garish lumière blanc. For weeks I luxuriated in the furious sunlight in which the city squinted and out of which Evelyn would appear to be with me. On the blazing Saturday evening when she told me we could only be friends, we were going to see Vertigo. On my way home, it tried painfully to rain. For days, I saw Evelyn everywhere. On August Bank Holiday Monday we were on a bus between the South Bank and Euston when I suggested that we see a film the following weekend. She countered with Another Woman. After that desultory affair in which a writer is distracted by strange voices through an apartment wall, we met only once more. It was the forty-fifth anniversary of Double Indemnity's British premiere and a Sunday in September when I took the Northern Line to Evelyn's flat in the far-flung suburb of Golders Green. After lunch, she told me a strange story of dead fathers, adulterous men and an insurance claim that was never realized. I vowed to take the tale with me to my grave. I will never forget the gaggle of sobbing men that I passed at the Jewish Cemetery on my way home.

One autumn night on which the rain tore at the window panes, I had a dream in which I went to Evelyn's flat and a vicious quarrel broke out in her lounge. The last thing I remember was pressing a gun against her stomach and firing. Jolted awake, I was convinced that there was someone in the flat. Putting the light on, a flashbulb exploded against the back of my eye, its shards flying to every corner of my head. I squeezed my eyes shut until the throbbing stopped. Then I must have fallen asleep. Drifting in and out of consciousness, it felt as though someone had poked me in the eye with a pair of scissors. I saw a blurry figure in blue approach my bed: "How do you feel this morning, Mr Armstrong?" I tried to sound upbeat, but she was not fooled: "The pain will pass over time, I guarantee", she said in a husky whisper.

Copyright © Richard Armstrong 2004