Mark Twain outlived three of his four children. For the epitaph of Susy, his eldest girl, who died at age 24, he cribbed from a poem by the Australian writer Robert Richardson. Adapting the final stanza of Richardson’s “Annette,†he turned a long ode into a lullaby:
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
Twain chose to write a lullaby to commemorate his adult daughter, which Stephen recites to himself wading waist-high in the Ligurian Sea. He and Nancy stand holding hands, bracing themselves against the waves in the same water that stole Jonathan’s life. Parents say that their children will always be their “babies,†and maybe that’s most true for parents in mourning. What’s a newborn to a new mom? A baby, of course. But what’s a 24-year-old daughter to a 60-year-old man, as Twain was? A baby. What’s a cocky teenage boy to an English teacher in middle life and his rueful wife? A son who needs to be sung to sleep.
Episode three is Disclaimer’s strongest so far. If you ignore the present-day story line, which is hammy and boring, it’s two small, sad stories that make sense told side by side. Young Catherine and Jonathan in the throes of their desire; days later, Nancy and Stephen in the storm of their grief.
So let’s get Robert and Catherine out of the way first. It’s not that these characters are unlikeable; I like unlikeable characters. It’s that they’re implausible. Catherine’s major personality traits are selfishness and a mild yet persistent case of trichophagia. Robert is a 50-something aristocrat who has apparently never once before considered the fact that he is rich and other people take the bus to work. He drives away from Catherine, as we saw him do at the close of episode two, swigging from the whiskey bottle. At some point he must have pulled over because he wakes up hungover in the backseat. Instead of heading to work, he takes the bus — the bus is employed preposterously as a metonym for the life of hardship from which Robert is ordinarily protected — to a proper “caff†where he can read The Perfect Stranger in a place no one he knows would ever frequent. I bet that Robert — like his son and the Notting Hill bookseller who later agrees to stock the novel — will relish the part where the Catherine character gets her lethal comeuppance.
But 20 years ago in the sepia-dusted London suburbs, Nancy Brigstocke gives a much more elegant accounting of the state of her life. She rests in the back garden on a sunny day reading the “Culture†section. She wants to see the Rembrandt exhibition that’s going up at the National Gallery. She doesn’t want to miss it like she missed the Pollock and the Monet, a middle-class life ticked off in the modern masters she’s never seen. (One has to wonder what she was doing instead — perhaps sitting in the back garden on a sunny day lamenting other modern masters she’d never seen.)
A new Almodóvar film is out next month, she tells Stephen, both of them acutely aware, even before the police knock on the door with very bad news, that they won’t go see it. They haven’t been to the cinema in over a year, come to think of it, though Stephen would probably say it was more recently that Nancy successfully dragged him to a Bergman retrospective at the BFI — the one that left him bewildered and depressed. Is any of this actually spoken? No. Yet Nancy’s lines and the way Lesley Manville delivers them in a resigned whisper, like she’s complaining to an imaginary audience, paints a picture of languid dissatisfaction. It’s gestural and captivating.
Alas, the doorbell rings and Stephen’s voice-over intrudes, bulldozing the intimacy. The cops are here and they invite themselves in — never a good sign. Stephen mutes the TV rather than turning it off. Having clearly done this before, the police have a routine: the senior officer sits the family down while his junior makes tea for the newly bereaved. In this timeline, Jonathan died in an accident in Forte dei Marmi only yesterday. The man tells Nancy and Stephen, both stunned, that they’ll have to go to Italy to identify the body. This gives Nancy a moment’s hope, but no, the identification process is a legal formality. It’s definitely Jonathan. They’ll need to collect him themselves; the consulate will help. The tea is milky, Nancy complains at the same, nearly imperceptible volume she complained about never seeing Impression, Sunrise.
Once the cops go — a hasty exit that also feels rehearsed — the Brigstockes hold each other. Nancy’s sobs grow into wails. Stephen cocoons her while their steaks burn on the barbecue. Because they’ve left the television playing, the background to their heartbreak is some kind of baldness infomercial — a juxtaposition that screams, “Hey, look! I’m juxtaposing unlike things!†and not much else. This closeness is temporary, we know. Soon, Nancy and Stephen will grow very far apart.
But in the Pisa airport the next day, the Brigstockes sit shoulder-to-shoulder waiting for the British envoy to take them on a hellish tour of Tuscany. The first stop is the morgue. It’s him, of course, it’s him, but there’s some part of them that’s surprised to learn this hasn’t been a terrible mistake. Stephen takes his boy’s cold hand. Nancy cups his beautiful face and lays her cheek on his chest. When was the last time she hugged Jonathan this close? Do teenage boys slow down enough to be hugged by their mothers? (When did we last hold our own mothers?) The sadness of the moment builds slowly. Stephen covers his wife’s body with his own, their faces stacked on the screen like a totem pole. Stephen’s is breaking; Nancy’s is wild; Jonathan’s still. (Speaking of the masters, this is Cuarón’s “Pietà .â€)
Next, the Brigstockes are escorted to Jonathan’s hostel, where Nancy has an instinct to hide the undeveloped rolls of film on the nightstand from her husband. Stephen fingers the pocket knife he’ll find 20 years from now in Jonathan’s desk drawer in episode one. He gave it to his son for his birthday over Nancy’s objections, wishing that it would bring them a little closer. Nancy and Jonathan were always close, or so Stephen claims in voice-over. Maybe this is why she hides the film from him. Even in death, Nancy wants bits of their son that only belong to her.
Finally, the envoy takes the Brigstockes to the beach where the drowning happened, next to the lifeguard stand, ironically. If Stephen’s narration is to be believed, rescuing Nicholas is the first and last selfless act Jonathan ever committed. If you believe him. It’s here that the Brigstockes hear her name for the first time, the one they will change in The Perfect Stranger: Catherine Ravenscroft. By the time Jonathan’s parents have reached Italy, the mother of the boy whose life was saved has already flown back to London, where Nancy vows to track her down.
But for now, she’s here, on this beach. The last place her own young son ever saw. Nancy runs into the sea in her skirt suit and blouse. Up to her knees. Farther. Stephen follows her into the surf, where they reach for each other’s hands and let the cold, gray water hit them over and over again. They sway with it. It rocks them. The sea is its own lullaby. It’s an arresting image, and it will be followed by one of the dumbest: Jonathan getting a blowie, filmed from the fellator’s POV. (“Hey, look! I’m juxtaposing unlike things!â€)
I’m writing about them here sequentially, but throughout the episode, Jonathan’s story line interrupts his parent’s grief tour. They are in the same city, worlds apart. When we first see Jonathan, little Nicholas is asleep in his arms. Young Catherine is grateful for all his help, including the escort back to their hotel. Jonathan still sounds so nervous he can barely speak. He transfers Nicholas to the safety of his mother, his arms limp around her. (When did Nicholas last hug Catherine?)
This is it. This is the moment Jonathan’s fate is decided — his sliding doors moment. Say good-bye to this woman and live forever. Stay for a drink and never go home again. Catherine puts Nicholas to bed in the hotel suite and heads back down to the bar to buy Jonathan a thank-you drink to thank him for eating pizza with Nicholas, which she bought to thank him for carrying her things off the beach in the first place.
Young Catherine is exceedingly pretty, but over glasses of white wine at her five-star resort, she’s also kind of an asshole. Have you always been faithful to your girlfriend? she asks Jonathan. Even in your mind? What about Kate Moss? Salma Hayek? Who do you fancy? “Kylie Minogue,†Jonathan finally offers, cowering as much as a person can cower while still technically sitting in a chair.
From here, Catherine’s arch-questioning gets even more specific. What would he do to Kylie? Where would he kiss her? Mouth. Where would he touch? Breasts. Nipples, too? Yes. How? Softly. Wrong answer! One needs to press Kylie’s nipples. Catherine bites her lip and asks Jonathan if the fantasy that she’s just revised for him makes him hard. I think he says yes, but it’s difficult to say because the actor looks like he’s having a petit mal seizure. (Does the character have a stammer? Is this bad acting or bad directing?) Once Catherine has toyed with him enough, she invites Jonathan up to her room. And Nicholas? Jonathan asks, suddenly a complete dolt. Yes, Jonathan, the room where Nicholas is sleeping. Who are you — her husband? Just accept the damn key.
From this point forward, things get very May December. (Except for the tea lights. Catherine lights an absurd number of candles in the time it takes Jonathan to leave the bar and find her suite.) Catherine strips to just her bikini bottoms, expressing anxiety over her older, post-motherhood body (which is, for the record, a Hollywood-perfect body). Mrs. Ravenscroft is the teacher. Show me how you would touch Kylie’s breasts. It’s a sex scene; it’s a tutorial. She’s a young mother rediscovering a sense of control and trying things she says she can’t ask of her husband. But the things she asks of Jonathan are basic ones: to tongue her the way she prefers, to go slower, to engage in some very mild ass play. If she can’t ask these things of Robert, can she ask anything of him at all? It’s turning Catherine on to tell Jonathan what to do; it’s emboldening Jonathan to be doing it all correctly according to the exact specifications of a “sex Yoda.†They make the transition to penetrative sex, but just like on the train to Venice, Jonathan can’t wait for his partner. Disclaimer is a show about a boy who always finishes first.
Twenty years later, an older version of this woman will call this boy’s father, hopeful she can bend another Brigstocke to her will. When she phones, Stephen will be eating ten-year-old preserves which Nancy made before she died — puke. In a voicemail, Catherine praises The Perfect Stranger for being such a powerful work of fiction. A remarkable work of fiction. Say “fiction†again, lady; I bet you almost have him convinced. Honestly, her message is so misjudged that it’s hard to believe Catherine is a successful documentarian, someone who has to read people and induce them to open up.
For his part, Stephen says he has no need for Catherine to acknowledge him or his wife’s book or even the role she played in his son’s death. We’re past that. Stephen simply wants Catherine to suffer, to wade out into the sea like he did decades earlier while the skies grayed in every direction. He wants a storm to roll in as it did for him and for Nancy that day in Forte dei Marmi. For Stephen, there’s been no “warm summer sun†or “warm Southern wind.†He wants Catherine to live where he’s been living all this time: under the thundering gloom of what she did to his son.