Cool Repentance

by Antonia Fraser

  'She isn't eighteen though', said Blanche in a sulky voice. 'She's forty-seven. At least that's what it says in Who's Who in the Theatre and Ketty says actresses always lie about their age. You're only forty-three, Daddy. You're nearer to eighteen than Mummy is.'

  'If you're going to be in that kind of mood, I shall feel nearer a hundred,' said Julian. 'Cut it out, Blanche, will you.'

  'I really am forty-seven, darling.' In contrast to Julian, Christabel spoke in a pleasant rather amused voice. 'Exactly four years and five days older than Daddy, if you want absolute accuracy.'

  'Look darling,' Julian gave Christabel another hug, 'don't worry about the lily-of-the-valley coffee pot. I'll order another one from Goode's or wherever it came from. 1 should have thought about it before.'

  'We did think about it!' exclaimed Blanche, sulkiness suddenly abandoned. 'Ketty and I thought about it. We discussed it for hours. Whether you would want your own tray without the proper coffee pot or another set, all matching, and Ketty thought—'

  'A silver coffee pot might have been the answer.' But Christabel's attention had manifestly wandered. 'Where is Ketty?' she enquired, that sharper note returning to her voice. 'Isn't she supposed to look after breakfast on Sunday mornings when the Blagges are off? What's wrong with her?'

  'Easter Sunday. That's what's wrong with her. Ketty's at her own church in Larminster praying for us all. Especially for you, Mummy. She says God never loses sight of any one of us sinners, just like the newspapers. Those were her exact words. She's terribly religious these days; I think it's something to do with the new Pope and the fact he was once an actor. She made something called a novena for you, Mummy. To be forgiven.'

  'Are we or are we not going to have breakfast?' Julian Cartwright took the clean folded white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his dressing-gown and blew his nose loudly. 'And if so, is there the faintest chance of a man having a cup of coffee and perhaps even some decent bacon and eggs before it's time for lunch? Are you, Blanche, going to make it, or am I?'

  'I'll make it, darling,' cried Christabel, smoothing her hair back with one long-lingered hand. The nails were long, too, and unpainted, but her hands in general, unlike her face, were the hands of a middle-aged woman. 'Besides, Blanche is going to change into something warmer and more suitable. Yes you are, poppet, this minute and no argument.'

  Christabel was already opening the fridge and getting out eggs and limp rashers of raw bacon. She certainly gave the air of knowing where everything was. Even the three attempts she made to find the jar of coffee were done so purposefully that she might have been performing some agreed ritual of opening and shutting cupboard doors.

  'This reminds me of Sunday mornings in London,' she said over her shoulder to Julian. 'We just need some Mozart.' Her voice was tender, 'When I was in that long season at the Gray Theatre. We never used to come down to Lark on Sundays then; too exhausting. The girls had to go to school on Monday morning. Ketty went to church; my contribution to church-going was playing the Coronation Mass, and cooking us brunch. Do you remember?'

  'I rather think that I used to cook it more often than not.' But Julian's voice too was tender. 'You used to sleep so late, the girls and I would have starved if we had waited for you to put one dainty toe out of bed - and shall I put some Mozart on for you now? Have it wafted in from the drawing-room?'

  Christabel set down the frying-pan and faced him: in her high-heeled mules she still looked up at him.

  'Happy?' she asked in her low musical voice. 'Happy now?' Her wide blue unblinking eyes met his; he had the illusion that there was moisture in them or perhaps it was in his own. He could smell the strong lily-of-the-valley scent she always used.

  There's no one like you, Christabel.' His voice, unlike hers, was husky. 'You know that.' With one hand Julian grasped the back of his wife's head and pressed his lips hard to hers. His other hand went down towards her breast beneath its thin wool covering.

  Christabel stayed quite still for an instant without responding or resisting. Then she gave a minute but quite unmistakable shudder of disgust.

  'I'm sorry,' she said very low. This time there were definitely tears. Their eyes met again. They were both breathing quite heavily.

  'Back to normal then,' Julian continued to hold her by her head. After a moment Christabel kissed him on the cheek.

  'Hello, young lovers!' said a voice from the french windows. 'Happy Easter anyway to the two of you - but you look happy enough already. I've brought some eggs for the girls by the way - we've been having an Easter egg hunt here for the last few years, Christabel, and I thought you wouldn't mind if we continued the tradition.' An extremely tall man, at least six foot five or six, stood there, bending his head much as the horse had done.

  'Gregory!' exclaimed Christabel, patting her hair. 'What an unearthly hour to come calling.' The gesture was not coquettish; and she made no attempt to sound pleased. 'And aren't the girls getting a little old for Easter eggs?' she added.

  'Unearthly? I've just dropped Mrs Blagge back at the cottage after Mass. Miss Kettering drove herself but refused to drop Mrs B., so I suppose they've had one of their religious rows about the new doctrines again. Now to the Easter egg hunt, and then I'll be away back to the woods - no one is too old for Easter eggs by the way, not me, not Julian, not even you, Christabel.'

  Christabel raised her eyebrows and smiled; she resumed her attention to the frying-pan.

  'Look, old man, why don't you stay to lunch?' said Julian after a pause. 'After the hunt. You'd be a great help to us, as a matter of fact. You see we've got some people from television coming down; strange as it may seem, they're coming all this way for lunch. And frankly we're dreading it. But if you were here, with all your experience of television—'

  'Yes, why don't you, Gregory darling?' added Christabel sweetly from the stove. 'Quite apart from television, you're so good at talking to everyone about everything, and finding out things—'

  Gregory Rowan sounded, for the first time since his arrival, uncertain. 'I thought you'd said goodbye to all that kind of thing for good, Christabel. Or is it a retrospective? Christabel Hcrrick Remembers? My Twenty Years a Star? No Regrets Herrick? Something along those lines perhaps?'

  'Don't be ridiculous, Gregory.' This time Julian was definitely cross. 'This is nothing to do with Christabel. It's the Larminster Festival. Surely I don't need to remind you of the existence of the Larminster Festival?'

  'Hardly. Yes, thank you, Christabel, I will have an egg. No toast. Yes, I know I should look after myself more and I'm too thin. Both sides please.'

  'I know your tastes, darling.'

  'Hardly can 1 forget it,' continued Gregory, easing himself down on to the polished bench, with its bright check cushions, by the kitchen table. 'It's rapidly turning into the Gregory Rowan Festival, I fear. Since that touring company is bringing down one of my plays - their idea, nothing to do with me. I would have so much preferred to write a moving piece specially for the Festival about the night King Charles [I spent at Larminster escaping after Worcester. Good rousing local stuff: the village inn, the village maiden, lots of them, a rib-tickling mistress of the tavern, a Mistress Quickly part - would have been good part for you there, Christabel, if you're really making a come-back - exciting new departure style—'

  'The Larminster Festival,' said Julian, pointedly interrupting, 'has been chosen by some television company—'

  'Megalith,' put in Christabel. 'Cy Fredericks runs it. That's the point. He's a darling. Or rather, he used to be a darling. That sort of thing doesn't change.'

  'Larminster has been chosen to feature in a coming series about British arts festivals. From the highest to the lowest.' Julian smiled, more at ease. *I imagine Larminster comes somewhere near the bottom of the latter category. If not the bottom. The presenter, or whatever you call it, is that woman with reddish hair everybody goes on about for being so beautiful and so brilliant, what is she called? She generally concentrates on social causes l
ike housing and unmarried mothers and that sort of thing. She did that huge series last year called The Poor and their Place. The arts, we gather, are a new line. What is she called, darling?'

  But it was Gregory Rowan who supplied the name.

  'Jemima Shore,' he said in a thoroughly disconcerted voice. 'Jemima Shore Investigator, as she is laughingly known. General busybody might be a better name. You have to be referring to Jemima Shore. Is she coming here? To the Larminster Festival?'

  'She is coming to Lark Manor,' responded Christabel, placing a

  perfectly fried egg in a ramekin in front of Gregory; she gave the impression of performing the action in front of a larger audience. There you are, just as you like it. Eat up. Never say I don't look after you, darling.'

  3

  Sea-Shells

  On the way to Sunday lunch at Lark Manor, Jemima Shore took a detour which brought her down to the sea. She took along her assistant, the lovely Cherry; Flowering Cherry as she was known at Megalithic House. The famous curves which were the toast of that establishment were on this occasion delineated by a tightly belted mackintosh; it covered Cherry's traditional outfit of white silk pearl-buttoned blouse, buttons hardly adequate to the task imposed upon them, and short tight skirt (Cherry was one of those girls who never noticed the temporary disappearances of the mini-skirt from the ranks of high fashion).

  Cherry, who both admired and loved Jemima Shore with all the enthusiasm of her passionate nature, nevertheless felt able to disapprove her inordinate taste for the sea without disloyalty.

  'At least she can't plunge in, this time,' thought Cherry, huddling her shoulders as she stood among the pebbles; she looked like a plump little bird, fluffing out its feathers.

  Jemima Shore, immaculate as usual in a red suede jacket and dark-blue trousers with long boots - 'That jacket must have cost a fortune,' thought Cherry reverently - stood at the edge of the water watching it hiss towards her feet. She looked, Cherry reflected with less reverence, as though she expected a message from Megalith Television to arrive in a bottle.

  But when the message came, it was not from Megalith Television and it was not in a bottle. Jemima and Cherry appeared to be alone on the seashore. The stretch of shingly beach was not in itself very extensive: the centre of it was a river - the river Lar no doubt, for according to the one signpost Jemima had suddenly spotted on their route to the manor, they had passed through Larmouth. The river was surrounded by groups of trees on either side of its banks where it flowed onto the beach, making a

  shallow course among the pebbles. The village itself appeared to consist of one pub called The King's Escape (jolly picture of a black-moustached Charles II swinging in the breeze above, empty plastic tables outside), a telephone kiosk and a row of cottages. But the beach was quite hidden from the view of the houses by a turn of the cliff; this made it an unexpectedly secluded and charming place.

  Jemima's fast Mercedes sports car, a recent acquisition, was parked on the crunchy pebbles where the grassland gave way to the sea-scape beneath the lee of the cliffs. It was a new crunch which attracted Cherry's attention, although Jemima - 'mooning as though she'd never seen the sea before' in Cherry's words - did not turn her head.

  The crunch was caused by a very large, not particularly well-kept, estate car; it was black and with its long body bore a certain resemblance to a hearse. The man who got out of it was however so long in himself that Cherry got the feeling that he might have needed the hearse to house his legs. Like Jemima, he wore very tight trousers, although his - pale cords -were as worn as hers were pristine. Standing together by the sea-shore, with their height and slimness, they resembled two birds, two herons perhaps, visiting the sea.

  Cherry was one who, however preoccupied, never failed to assess a male face; she had rather liked the look of this one as he passed. The worn countenance in particular appealed. Cherry was, as she put it, currently into older and worn men (it was fortunate too for her enthusiasm that the two categories so often coincided). Cherry was a great watcher of late-night thirties movies on television, a way of life which had probably started the craze. Of this particular worn face, she had noted as he passed, with satisfaction: 'Like Bogart. On stilts.'

  Cherry, watching them at a distance, thought sentimentally that they made a nice couple - 'Both so tall. Though Jem always seems to fancy more the short and powerful type. Is he some dishy country squire, I wonder? Would Jem like that - the lady of the manor? Probably not. Never mind Jemima. Would I like it?' Thus Cherry's mind made its accustomed moves towards local romance and its fulfilment, particularly as she had lately decided that a Substantial Older Man (face, but not bank account, well worn) was the kind of interesting new development her lifestyle needed.

  The actual words which were being exchanged while Cherry indulged in these agreeable reveries were rather less romantic.

  Jemima Shore had not thought that Gregory Rowan looked in the slightest bit like Humphrey Bogart, although she did have time to notice in a rather more oblique fashion than Cherry that he was quite attractive. And then something happened immediately which made her decide that Gregory Rowan was quite one of the most aggressive over-bearing - and thus unattractive - men she had encountered in recent years.

  Gregory Rowan began bluntly enough:

  'I hardly think the Larminster Festival is in need of your kind of publicity, Miss Shore,' he said, dragging quite violently on his cigarette as though it was in some danger of extinction.

  'And what might my kind of publicity be?' enquired Jemima in her coldest voice, the one she used to freeze unruly - or socially undesirable -interviewees, tycoons wrecking the environment or bland cabinet ministers determined to be jocular rather than truthful.

  But Gregory found himself well able to answer the question. To Jemima's considerable surprise she found herself being described as a cultural busybody, a parasite on the body of the arts, and a few other choice terms of abuse - all whilst standing on a cool sea-shore, with the wind whipping her fair hair in her eyes, but hardly disturbing Gregory's own, which was so bushy as to be apparently impregnable to the wind's attacks.

  'Why don't you just chuck this programme, Miss Shore? Go away? Go back to London where you belong, and sort out a whole new generation of unmarried mothers who weren't old enough to watch your programme on the Pill - For and Against—'

  'I'm glad at least you're a fan of my work,' interposed Jemima sweetly.

  'Fan! You may take this as you wish, but it's the sort of programme you make, the sort of woman you are - oh, all right, before you speak, person if you like - which drove me away from jolly old London to live in the woods of Lark! Gregory Rowan, the Happy Hermit. A good television title? I read your mind. But that is one title you will never see flashing up on your screen. Which is just one reason, having made my choice, why I don't want my retreat polluted by the mating cries of television.'

  'Aren't you taking all this rather too personally, Mr Rowan? After all—' This time Jemima was valiantly maintaining her sweetness of manner, as much to annoy as to placate, when suddenly a swoosh of icy water covered her boot and caused her to jump sharply backwards. To her surprise, Gregory Rowan paid no attention whatsoever, either to her jump or to the ingression of the sea. The swirling wave covered his feet in their gym shoes, sought out his ankles, and he did not even move.

  Jemima Shore, retreating, continued her sentence, trying to match his own composure. The tide was coming in quite fast, and even Jemima, dedicated bather in a more salubrious climate, did not propose to be involuntarily immersed in the English seas in April.

  'After all, Megalith Television is not trying to mate with you, Mr Rowan, merely cover the Larminster Festival as part of a nation-wide series - not at all the same thing - as for your dislike of London—' The waters were softly receding but Jemima kept a watchful eye for the next insurgence - 'it doesn't seem to extend to the West End theatre, I notice?

  Or to the production of your plays in London television studios
? So that while you expect to be sacrosant, West End money—'

  Whatever Gregory Rowan would have replied to that was swallowed up by jemima's hasty and crunchy retreat up the shore at the next wave.

  Gregory Rowan watched her. Once again he made no move either to retreat himself or assist her on the pebbles. He merely smiled. His smile gave an unexpectedly pleasant cast to his countenance - that countenance Cherry had aptly characterized as 'worn' - but his words were if anything even more ungracious.

  'I suppose you expect me to cry out penitently louche and fall at your feet in worship? You've got me quite wrong. It's not London productions of my plays I object to, the more the merrier so far as I'm concerned. Hello, Shaftesbury Avenue, hail to the National! I'll even consider something warm, human and musical at the RSC. Failing that, a permanent rotating series of my plays at the Round House, or if Chalk Farm sounds too pastoral, the Royal Court. And all that goes for teievision too. How is Megalith's drama by the way?'

  'Exquisite,' Jemima put in swiftly. Gregory proceeded as if she had not spoken.

  'No, it's Larminster I want to preserve from your ghastly grip. Larminster and its inhabitants.' 'Principally yourself?'

  Gregory looked at her as if measuring her. His gaze, if speculative, remained cold. Whatever he was measuring her for, was not she felt, likely to appeal.

  'Oddly enough, not,' he said after a while. 'As you've pointed out, I at least have considerable experience of television. And,' he paused, 'I've nothing to hide. But have you thought of the effects a television programme, the sheer making of a television programme, has on ordinary people?*

  He lit another cigarette. The water was swirling round his shoes again; Jemima remained out of danger.

  'People who do have something to hide? Bruised people? Vulnerable people? There are such people in the world, Miss Shore, even if you, with a toss of your golden head, have no cognizance of them. Let me come to the point. Hasn't Christabel suffered enough from you people? Haven't we all suffered enough on her behalf and through her? Her husband? Her children? Everyone who is or was close lo her, some of them very humble people by your standards, Miss Shore, but still people by mine. Vulnerable, bruised people, people who have - forgive my old-fashioned language, so unlike the language no doubt to which you're used - people who have repented what they did. What might television do to them? You might even try thinking sometimes of the meek, Miss Shore - after all it's not Megalith Television that's going to inherit the earth.'