Familiar Rooms in Darkness

by Caro Fraser

  Briony was not always there – her work took her up to London for long spells – but when she was she would occasionally join them, her chair next to Harry’s, his hand clasped in one of her own, and help out with accounts of events since their marriage. She was the fondest, tenderest, most devoted of wives, it seemed to Adam. But at times when he sought to draw her out on her own, when Harry was resting, she would generally make some excuse to keep the conversation short. Adam got the impression that, although she was more than happy to help out where Harry was concerned, she didn’t care to reveal too much about herself. For all the warmth and ease of her manner, there was, when they were alone together, a distinct reserve.

  The rest of the time Adam spent in London, working his way through a long list of people drawn up by Harry, who had all known him at different times in his life and had an engaging range of recollections and stories. The material was abundant. Adam had no time to go off at any tangent of his own, even if he’d wanted to.

  In early December Harry became briefly too unwell to continue with the collaboration, and Adam took the opportunity to try to pull the material together, going through the various interviews which he had transcribed from tape to computer. Megan was away for a few days, and he welcomed the uninterrupted solitude as a chance to get a proper overview of the material he had gathered so far.

  It was a laborious task. When he had finished, he knew he should have been pleased with what had been accomplished so far, but instead he felt an odd sense of dissatisfaction. Something about the biography thus far wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He thought about it for some time, going on one of his habitual long walks around the local streets and parks. The truth was, nothing so far gave any new insights into Harry Day. Apart from Harry’s own recollections of his childhood, Adam was aware that everything, every fact, every anecdote, every name and every face, had featured somewhere previously. Much had been written about Harry during his lifetime. This biography, apart from re-hashing that, should cast new and fascinating light on its subject. It didn’t. So far, he wasn’t telling anyone anything that hadn’t been told before.

  He decided to speak to Giles about it. They met for a drink at a riverside pub near Giles’s office in Hammersmith. Giles was some twenty-five years older than Adam, and an ex-journalist. As Adam’s agent, he had naturally been ecstatic at Adam’s good fortune in securing the chance to write Harry Day’s biography, particularly since he would be creaming off a healthy ten per cent, but he had always had certain reservations about Adam’s sense of independence in the matter. It seemed to Giles that Adam was too enthusiastically admiring of Harry, too prepared to take the old man’s word as gospel, to try to delve deeper and find those little hidden pockets of dirt which made a person’s life interesting. He listened to Adam’s misgivings, and said as much.

  ‘Well, where is there to go?’ Adam spread his hands. ‘I’ve only got what Harry’s told me. None of his friends and acquaintances have come up with any dark secrets or interesting aspects of his past. They all think Harry’s a wonderful guy. Fine, he’s had some run-ins with the odd theatre director or critic, but nothing electrifying. Above all, nothing new.’

  ‘What about his family?’

  ‘Apart from Briony, his wife, I haven’t got round to them yet. I’ve been too busy making the most of what time Harry has left. Besides,’ Adam lifted his beer and took a sip, ‘I should think they’d be the last people to start dishing the dirt. If there is any, that is.’

  ‘What about his first wife, Cecile Patterson? You might unearth something interesting there.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ sighed Adam. ‘According to Harry, they’re the best of friends. She even gets on with Briony. All is sweetness and light. Maybe it’s the truth. Maybe I just have to accept that he’s a genial old man of letters who, apart from being busted for drugs and once landing one on the literary editor of the New Statesman at a drinks party, led an average life. Christ, what am I saying? Everything he’s done, everything he’s ever been, should be interesting enough. But somehow it’s not.’

  ‘Because everyone knows it all.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘How is he, by the way?’

  ‘Harry? Improving slightly. I rang Briony yesterday. If he’s better next week, I’ll go back to Gandercleugh and pick up where we left off. But it’s just a matter of weeks now, I suspect.’

  ‘Well,’ said Giles thoughtfully, ‘maybe the real problem is the fact that Harry’s still around. It’s something of a constraint, you know. Not just on the people who know him, but on you. You naturally feel reluctant to go to work properly.’

  ‘Properly?’

  ‘As you said, what you’ve got so far is superficiality. It’s a life, but it’s the life he wants you and the world to know about.’

  ‘But what if there isn’t anything else? What if what you see is what you get? Anyway, I’m not deliberately aiming to unearth anything discreditable. That’s not what I mean. I just–’ He broke off, uncertain, exasperated.

  ‘Adam, you’re a journalist, a would-be biographer. It’s your job to dig deep, to investigate, use your instincts, follow up hunches. You’re writing about someone who’s lived on the planet for over seventy years. You want this biography to be more than a lengthy publisher’s blurb. You have to go to work.’

  ‘Giles, what d’you think I’ve been doing for the past two months?’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s me, the way I’m approaching it. Maybe I should make it more literary – what d’you think? Go more extensively into his work, and the way it reflects his life. I mean, I do that to a certain extent, but perhaps I should make it more academic–’

  ‘Adam, don’t be such a bloody Cambridge graduate. Be more forensic. We’re talking about a human being here, warts and all.’ Giles finished his beer. ‘Just give it time. Harry’s too substantial a presence right now. He’s dominating what you do. Wait until he’s a ghost. That’s my advice.’

  Two weeks later, a ghost was what Harry Day became. Nothing remained of him except a jar of ashes, volumes of assorted poetry, plays and novels, a circle of grieving relatives and friends, three fulsome broadsheet obituaries, and a drawerful of tapes and notes in Adam’s flat.

  2

  The memorial service for Harry took place the following May, at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden. Adam went, naturally. He already knew many of the faces from the work he had done so far on the biography, and could have chatted to any number of them, but Adam was not the mingling type. He preferred to sit at the back of the church on his own, observing.

  When the church was buzzing and full, and it appeared that proceedings might shortly commence, Bella hurried in through the door at the back. God, late for her father’s own memorial service, she thought. She could see members of her family up at the front, and was about to head down the aisle to join them when she noticed Adam, sitting alone. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral, when they had exchanged only a few words. She hesitated, then slid into the pew next to him.

  He glanced at her in surprise.

  ‘You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?’ asked Bella, with a tentative smile.

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Adam.

  They sat together in silence for some seconds. Adam wasn’t certain how to open the conversation, or even if they were meant to have one. Then Bella spoke, eyes fixed ahead, voice low. ‘I didn’t really want to come to this, you know. I didn’t want to go to the funeral, either. I just hate death, all the mournfulness.’

  ‘This shouldn’t be too bad,’ said Adam. ‘It’s meant to be a celebration of your father’s life. Or so it says here.’ He lifted the order of service which he’d been handed on entering the church.

  ‘I suppose so. Anyway, I’m meant to be reading something, so I have to be here.’

  Apart from their brief meetings at Gandercleugh and at Harry’s funeral in December, Adam had only ever seen Bella’s face in photographs in magazines. Now, sitting next to her, he wa
s enjoying the reality of her beauty, particularly the tiny flaws, which somehow enhanced the delicacy of her face and rendered more vulnerable the large grey eyes and childlike mouth.

  She glanced around the church and sighed. ‘Christ, I could kill for a cigarette.’ Then she turned to him, giving Adam a considering look. It was like being bathed in the radiance of some gentle light, thought Adam. She really was lovely, like an elegant urchin, with that luminous skin and ragged blonde hair. ‘I still think it was weird, Dad asking you to write about his life. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but he would have been better off doing it himself. Don’t you think?’

  ‘He left it too late. He knew he’d never finish it.’ Adam was silent for a moment, then added, ‘When we first met, I asked him why he didn’t write his own autobiography, and he said, “Because I couldn’t bear to tell the truth about myself.”’

  Bella smiled. It took long seconds for the smile to die away. Adam watched her mouth, fascinated. She looked at him again. ‘Why d’you think he asked you, in particular?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know…’

  ‘I mean, you’re very young.’

  ‘Am I? Is thirty-three young?’

  ‘I should hope so. I’m twenty-nine. God, is this thing ever going to start?’ She tapped her bag impatiently. Adam glanced down at her hands, at the polished oval nails, the slender fingers.

  ‘I think he asked me because I’m a good listener. Because we got on well. And because – well, maybe you’re right. Because I’m young. I think he found it reassuring.’

  ‘Not having to look death in the eye, you mean.’

  ‘Not straight in the eye, no.’ Adam smiled. ‘I think he thought, too, that I wouldn’t judge him, or his life. That I’d just write it.’

  ‘Was he right?’ He felt the touch of her glance again, lingering, appraising him.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I still don’t know enough. There’s everything he told me, of course. I’ve interviewed an endless number of people. But I still don’t know everyone else’s side of things.’ He gestured vaguely around the assembled members of the service of thanksgiving for the life of Harry McCardle Wentworth Day. ‘Ideally I’d like to hear everyone’s version of events. I have this theory that the voices which are still alive and talking at the end of someone’s life don’t tell the whole story. The ones that have fallen silent along the way, the people from forgotten parts of a person’s past – they tell another kind of truth. If you can track them down.’

  Bella was about to say something when a hush fell in the church. Bella and Adam glanced up. A portly, tall man with a trim grey beard and a flamboyant waistcoat beneath a red velvet jacket stepped forward to the front of the gathering. He welcomed everyone, and embarked upon a neat, amusing résumé of the life of the deceased, finishing with a reminder that ‘Harry would want this to be a day of laughter and irreverence, and not of melancholy reflection.’

  ‘Who is that?’ whispered Adam to Bella.

  She leaned close to catch his words, and he drew his breath to take in the scent of her.

  ‘Andrew Nugent, my stepmother’s brother. He’s on the radio a lot.’

  Adam thought the voice was familiar. He sat back and watched as the proceedings unfolded. He had never been to a memorial service before. A variety of well-known guests, writers and actors paid tributes to Harry. There were amusing anecdotes and recollections, readings from his novels and poetry, and an extract, read by one of Harry’s rock celebrity friends, from one of his Rox columns recounting a hilarious, stoned two days at Glastonbury. Bella read, both amusingly and touchingly, a letter written to her by her father in her teens while he was in Brixton prison. Two of Harry’s favourite rock songs were played – ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ and Neil Young’s nine-minute-long ‘Ambulance Blues’. A nervous ten-year-old great-nephew read one of his comic poems, and after an hour and a quarter, to the strains of ‘Hey Jude’, people made their way out of the Actors’ Church into the flagged churchyard and the mild May afternoon.

  Bella and Adam drifted apart, Adam to talk to fellow journalists, Bella to members of her family. Adam glanced in her direction several times, and once found her looking at him. When their eyes met, it gave him a wonderful jolt. He hadn’t had a crush like this in a long time. Hopeless, of course. But sometimes, the more hopeless the better. Something that needn’t interfere with real life, just repose idly in one’s dreams.

  Bella eyed Adam again surreptitiously. He hadn’t made much of an impression on her at their first meeting, except for his ultra-good manners, but seeing him again today, she was intrigued. What struck her most was his gentle diffidence. She could read most men’s eyes and find the same predictable things there most of the time – that came with being well known – but Adam Downing was quite inscrutable. Except for his smile, which was sweet and warm. Charming. That’s what he was. Charming, but not in the up-front, look-at-me way she was used to. He was like a very polite, grown-up schoolboy. And he was, in a tweedy kind of way, bloody gorgeous. Uh-oh. Here she was, doing it again. Why couldn’t she just meet people, and like them, without always wanting to seduce them?

  She crossed the churchyard. ‘Are you coming with the rest of us to Gandercleugh?’ she asked Adam.

  ‘I haven’t been invited.’

  ‘I’m inviting you. It’s family and old friends, but as you’re Harry’s biographer, you should be there.’

  ‘I rather think that if she’d wanted me there, Briony would have asked me,’ said Adam diplomatically.

  ‘What’s it got to do with Briony?’

  ‘Well, she’s Harry’s widow…’

  ‘I’m Harry’s daughter.’ Bella regarded him for a few seconds, wondering what he was thinking. ‘Don’t you want to come? I’d have thought it would be invaluable to you, seeing the family all together. Give you marvellous insights, a chance to schmooze up to one or two and get them talking.’

  ‘I don’t like the idea of being an unwelcome intruder.’

  ‘Some journalist!’

  ‘On top of that, I don’t much feel like driving all the way to Suffolk and back in a day.’

  ‘Stay the night. You’ve done it plenty of times before.’

  ‘Absolutely not. I mean, thanks, but no. If I want to keep in with your stepmother, this is not the right way to go about it.’

  ‘Well, there’s a hotel in the village you can stay at.’

  There was a delicious pleasure to be had in arguing on such a familiar level with this gorgeous creature. ‘Why do you want me to come?’ Adam asked.

  She looked surprised. ‘I thought it might be of help to you.’ She could tell that he was wavering. ‘Don’t worry. If you come as my guest, Briony won’t utter a murmur. We have a most harmonious stepmother-and-daughter relationship. Besides, you’d be doing me a favour. My car’s in dock at the moment, and if you take me, then I won’t have to go with my brother Charlie and his fiancée. She is a total pain.’

  ‘You just want a lift, in fact.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s a mutually advantageous arrangement. You get to meet the assembled family at close quarters, and I don’t have to listen to Claire banging on about her wedding.’

  A two-hour drive to Suffolk, just himself and Bella.

  ‘All right. What’s this hotel like?’

  ‘Bog standard. You know, coaching inn turned Trust House Forte.’

  ‘I’ll have to pick up one or two things first.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll tell Charlie.’ She swept away to speak to her brother. Adam glanced over with curiosity at Charlie. He had seen photographs of Bella and her twin brother in Harry’s study at Gandercleugh, and found it hard to reconcile the son to the father. Charlie was fair, like Bella, but unlike either Bella or Harry he was big – tall and broad. He looked bulky and prosperous in his pin-striped suit, every inch the barrister, with that ruddy, buffed-up, peculiarly English handsomeness. Adam could picture him as he must have been a
t eighteen, a roaring prop forward in the school’s First XV, and the man he would be thirty years from now. He had the air of one bred to warm his arse at drawing-room fires, and to condescend to women as a means of getting them to sleep with him.

  The girl standing with Charlie had to be Claire. Adam could tell because she had her arm through his. Why did it look so silly, so proprietorial? Claire was tall, a drawn-out beauty with a narrow face and lazy-lidded eyes which made her look bored. Maybe she was. I mustn’t be determined to dislike her, just because Bella does, thought Adam.

  As Bella talked to her brother, Adam saw Charlie’s eyes flicker in his direction. Eyes just like Bella’s, but with an expression that was flat and hostile, quite unlike the warmth and curiosity of Bella’s. Adam glanced away. He guessed that any information concerning Harry Day the father would be more likely to come from Bella than from Charlie.

  Bella came back. ‘That’s all settled.’

  ‘I have to go home and get my car and things. Where shall I pick you up?’

  Bella scribbled the address down on a piece of paper. Beaufort Street, Chelsea. Of course. Adam smiled. ‘I’ll pick you up in an hour.’

  Cecile Patterson, Harry’s first wife and the mother of Bella and Charlie, stood near the church entrance, watching Bella talking to Adam. She was tall, with a serene, patrician air. Though she was now in her sixties, the evidence of her former beauty was still clear in her fine bones and deep-set eyes. She was elegantly dressed in a linen coat and high heels, a long silk scarf at her throat, and her grey hair was stylishly cut. She turned to Briony, who was standing next to her, smiling and murmuring at guests as they passed. Both wives had agreed that a united and friendly front was the best PR strategy. Briony had come into Harry’s life rather late, only ten years ago, and Cecile in no way regarded her as a usurper. If anything, she had been relieved that Harry had remarried before old age could throw back on her the possibility of responsibility for him. Both women had a strong regard for one another. Being involved with Harry and his life was a complex and taxing business.