Travels Through An Imaginary Landscape

Everingham & Redgrave (Deceased), Part Three

EPISODE ONE: EVERINGHAM & REDGRAVE (DECEASED)

PART THREE

          An hour or so later, erroneously thinking that my life couldn’t possibly get any stranger, I decided to go out for a bit of a walk to clear my head. It was a bright and pleasant, if somewhat breezy, afternoon and I figured that some vigorous exercise in the fresh air was just what was required to regain my focus for tackling the critical evaluation. However, in the end I managed about twenty minutes of aimless strolling before settling down on a bench on Clifton Green to read a book. I’m afraid it is rather a habit of mine to deal with anything contentious or stressful in my life by disappearing into literature for as long as I can in the hope that my problems will go away of their own accord in the meantime. On this occasion though I had barely managed a couple of pages before I was interrupted by the sound of hastily approaching footsteps.

          “Ah, there you are!” exclaimed an ever so slightly breathless voice. “You’re a very difficult person to track down, do you know that?”

          The bench creaked as a tall figure sat down next to me. “You don’t mind if I sit down, do you? I must have walked miles.”

          I looked up into the smiling face turned towards me and almost dropped my book. The face was certainly familiar to me but the last time I had seen it was staring down at me from a cinema screen in the Watershed on Monday evening. Which, given that the film in question was the 1938 classic The Lady Vanishes, made it quite impossible that the self-same face was now staring expectantly at me here on Clifton Green. Yet the evidence of my eyes said that the person sat next to me was in every way identical to the Michael Redgrave I had watched on screen just a few nights ago. The same face, the same hair, the same clothes, everything.

          I must have gawped open-mouthed for a good thirty seconds before eventually I said, “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

          A momentary look of concern passed across the features regarding me. “You are Natasha Everingham, aren’t you?”

          I had been thrown so far off balance that I had to properly consider for a few moments whether I would be correct to answer in the affirmative. “Yes, that’s me,” I finally replied.

          “Thought so,” concluded the interloper triumphantly. “They showed me a picture. I’m Michael Redgrave.”

          “Of course you are,” was all I could think to respond.

          “I need to talk to you quite urgently,” he said confidentially.

          “Of course you do.”

          “It’s about CJ Sturridge.”

          “Of course it is.” Realising that the conversation was slipping rather rapidly out of my understanding I made a concerted effort to rein it back in before my head exploded. “I’m sorry,” I broke in before my new friend could continue, “but… you’re Michael Redgrave?”

          “Correct,” he replied with a brisk nod.

          “The Michael Redgrave,” I continued disbelievingly. “Star of stage and screen, theatrical knight of the realm, Michael Redgrave?”

          “It’s alright, you don’t have to call me Sir Michael or anything like that,” he breezily announced.

         “But if you’re the actual Michael Redgrave shouldn’t you be a bit, well, dead by now?” I asked, trying to put it as politely as I could. I stared a little more intently at the smoothly handsome features before me. “Or at least looking a little worse for wear.”