I often feel other human beings are essentially unknowable; don’t even those closest to us do such strange and unwarranted things? But the sensation has surely never been more powerful than when, earlier this month, I went on the location of The Critic, a film based on my husband’s novel, Curtain Call. Taking it all in – the cinders on the road, the vintage cars, the extras in their furs and brogues – intense pride mingled with something less easy to identify. One day, several years ago, the man I live with was sitting in his office, staring into space, and now… all this?
The year is 1934. Ian McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, veteran theatre critic and sacred monster of Fleet Street. Gemma Arterton is Nina Land, an actress who longs for his approbation. Watching them together was wonderful, and oddly intimate; after a while, they completely dislodged from my mind the figures I’ve pictured for almost a decade. But what did T think? On the train home, I tried – and failed – to interrogate him. Just as, once, he couldn’t possibly tell me where these characters had sprung from, so he could not now articulate precisely what it felt like to see them brought to life. As we pulled into Finsbury Park station (it’s not all glamour), I thought yet again that I’ll never know quite what goes on in his mind. All I can do is be patient, encouraging and, in this particular case, cling very tightly to his coattails.
