‘Overlooking the marina, actually,’ she says, sharply, ‘and I don’t see what the view has to do with—’
I take one step closer to the window and pull up the blind.
‘Look out there,’ I say. ‘Look out of the window and tell me what you see.’
She opens her mouth – I can tell – to object to my instruction.
‘Just one glance,’ I plead. ‘Look out there and tell me if you can see a marina, filled with bobbing yachts, the moonlight dancing on the water. Or –’ I peek out of the window for a moment myself –‘tell me if what you can actually see is an ordinary street, a load of parked cars, the rubbish bins all put out for the bin-men tomorrow morning and … oh, I think that’s a fox rifling through one of the bins over there.’ The streetlight is bright enough for me to see the scrawny, bushy-tailed animal wrestling with what looks, at least from this distance, like a Domino’s pizza box and a Tropicana juice carton. ‘Please, Miss Kelly,’ I say. ‘Just look.’
For a moment, I think she’s not going to move.
Then, with a well-disguised air of curiosity, she takes one step closer to the window so she can peep out.
Her eyebrows shoot immediately upwards, in absolute astonishment.
‘I don’t understand!’ She glances over her shoulder to look at me. ‘Where has the marina gone?’
‘Exactly! That’s what I’m saying!’ I perch on the window-ledge and look right at her. This close up, the scent of her perfume is stronger than ever, and I can see the faintest lines around her eyes that make her – oddly enough – seem more real, somehow. Well, if not real, then more down-to-earth. More vulnerable, perhaps. ‘You’re magical!’ I continue. ‘Not just Hollywood magic, but real magic. You pop up out of the sofa and into my world and then … well, actually I have absolutely no idea where you go when you go back into the sofa.’ I think about this for a moment. ‘I mean, I have no idea whether you go back into your own world, or whether you just cease to exist for a bit … the only thing I am certain of – at least, I think I’m certain of it – is that it’s not a two-way thing. I don’t get to go into your world, as far as I know. This is more like … Alice in Wonderland, I suppose …’
‘I see. I see.’ Her voice is low, and she’s talking to herself more than to me. ‘I … I think I get it.’
‘Oh, thank God! OK, so as far as I can tell, from what’s happened before …’
‘It’s a dream. That explains it. It’s not a joke. It’s a dream. A very vivid dream, but only a dream.’
‘What? No, no, that’s not it at all!’
‘Don’t be absurd, dear.’ She stares down at me, with a thrilling return to her regal froideur. ‘Quite apart from the fact that what you’re saying cannot possibly be true – I mean, a magical sofa? – it simply cannot be the case that I’m the one who’s come into your real-life existence.’ She lifts her rather strong chin. ‘I’m Grace Kelly. Magic may happen around me – movie stardom, an Oscar win, marrying a prince and becoming a princess – but I am real.’
‘Yes, OK, I can see why you think that, but—’
‘I don’t think that. I know that. I am not some bit-player in your life! Some magical being in a world where you’re the real one …? No. It’s simply not possible. Things happen to me, after all. I do not happen to other people.’
I blink at her. ‘So … you’re telling me I’m the magical one?’
She lets out a rather delighted, excitable tinkle of laughter. It sounds like musical notes on a scale, and would probably be enchanting if she weren’t trying to tell me I don’t exist.
‘Oh, no, no, I’m not telling you you’re magical! Isn’t it obvious? You’re in my dream!’
‘No, I—’
‘It’s perfectly apparent to me, now.’ She paces, in a very dynamic way for someone wearing yards and yards of lace, over to the Chesterfield, and sits down. She seems to be thinking aloud. ‘I’ve been under a good deal of stress, the last few days have been frankly exhausting … I’m sleeping in a strange place, and I really shouldn’t have tried that rather pungent French cheese at supper this evening … so although I’ll admit this does all seem remarkably vivid, it’s obviously a dream. Now, if I were in psychoanalysis, the way everyone else I know is – in fact, I probably should have been in psychoanalysis, back home, but Mother and Father have always made it so clear they think it’s nothing but snake oil and codswallop – well, then I’d probably be able to glean all sorts of things from this dream that might help me in my real life.’ She looks up at me, fixing me with that penetrating, blue-eyed gaze for a moment. ‘Perhaps you’re supposed to represent some other version of me? Ooooh,’ she suddenly breathes, ‘are you my alter ego? The person I’d be if I didn’t look the way I do? If I hadn’t made it in the movies and met the prince? After all, you do look so terribly downtrodden and, well, ordinary.’
‘Hey! I’ve just had a bad night, that’s all.’ I give her a pretty penetrating gaze of my own. ‘You try looking anything other than downtrodden when the man you love doesn’t love you back.’
‘Aha!’ She seems to seize on this, actually clapping her hands together as if to capture the thought before it dares to sidle away again. ‘This is the second time you’ve mentioned this man you’re in love with! What message are you trying to convey? What inner truth are you trying to wheedle out of my subconscious?’
‘No message! No inner truth!’
‘Because obviously, I’ve had my share of love affairs …’ Quite suddenly, she lowers that cut-glass New England voice, worried that somebody in the ‘palace’ might overhear her, I suppose. ‘What I mean to say,’ she goes on, ‘is that perhaps I might, in the past, have fallen in love with a man who didn’t feel the same way as I did. And obviously, the night of one’s wedding, one’s thoughts start to turn to all that sort of thing … I won’t say I was deliberately thinking about Clark earlier today, when I was getting ready for the civil ceremony, but I certainly did find him popping into my mind—’
‘Clark Gable?’ I can’t help blurting. ‘You were in love with Clark Gable?’
Her pearlescent skin colours, ever so slightly. ‘Well! If you’re the manifestation of my subconscious, I’d think you ought to know about something like that!’
‘But I’m not the manifestation of—’
‘Anyhow, I don’t know if I was any more in love with him than I’ve ever been with a man. He was just the one that kept popping into my head earlier. And I suppose Rainier does look a little like him, with his moustache … I say: this fellow you’re talking about, the one you say you’re in love with, does he have a moustache? Because it would make a lot of sense if you said he did.’
‘No. He doesn’t have a moustache.’ I feel giddy with frustration though, to be fair, that could also be down to a combination of the lateness of the hour and the quantity of champagne I’ve drunk this evening. ‘Look,’ I try one more time, rather desperately, ‘I don’t know if you ever met Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe …’
‘Well, of course I have. They’re sweet girls … Oh!’ Grace gasps. ‘Is this another message? Because they do say that the prince was interested in meeting Marilyn Monroe, as a prospective bride, before he met me. Not that