by Caro Fraser
Cecile glanced briefly at the picture again. ‘I really can’t remember. Some photographer friend of Harry’s, I think. I didn’t know him well.’ She leaned back in her chair, evidently fatigued. Adam could read the subtle signals telling him that his time was up. He stared back at the picture. His instinct told him that Cecile knew very well who the man was, but was choosing not to say.
‘May I take this picture?’ he asked. ‘And a few of the ones of yourself? I’ll bring them back, of course.’
Again, an instant’s hesitation– but she agreed. She selected some of herself and Harry, and Adam tucked these, together with the wedding photograph, into his bag.
Cecile picked up the other album. ‘There are some more here,’ she said, opening it as though, despite her tiredness, she suddenly wanted to postpone Adam’s departure. ‘They’re mostly of the children.’
Even the picture of the infant Bella had a potent effect on Adam. He smiled at the sight of her in a smocked baby dress, sitting on a rug with her brother, toes bare, curls brushed. She had been lovely from the word go. He progressed through the album, hardly glancing at Charles, the sturdy toddler, or Harry and Cecile, the proud parents. It was a revelation to see Bella grow through the years as he turned the pages, the features changing imperceptibly, the wide-eyed childish innocence turning gradually into fresh, scarcely aware sexuality. He wouldn’t ask for any of these now. He knew he would have to come back another time, once he had spoken to Charles and Bella. He would go through these pictures at greater length then. He had enough for the time being.
Adam thanked Cecile for the coffee, and for her time and patience. She stood at the front door as Adam made his way to his car, waved as he set off, then went back inside to clear away the coffee cups. The photograph albums still lay on the table. With a faint sigh, almost one of reluctance, Cecile sat down and drew them towards her, turning the pages once more. She dwelt on the pictures of herself as a young woman. Such pleasure one could take in the enduring image of one’s loveliness. It almost obliterated the yearning pain of its brief, illusory transition. She contemplated a picture of herself, with a group of other people, in the foyer of the Royal Court. It was the opening night of The Entertainer, quite an occasion. Olivier had actually asked to play that part… There was a man who had always known what was good for him, unlike a lot of actors she knew. She gazed at herself, remembering the rustling feel of that dress, her first Dior, very chic. That was something girls missed today – the sensuousness of petticoats, that feeling of femininity… She closed her eyes, suddenly recalling, for no particular reason, the scent of cologne, Four-seven-eleven, and rouge in those little round green cardboard pots. How funny. What days they had been, the days of Harry’s early success. The people they had met. Dylan Thomas, trying one of her Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes and then cadging half a dozen. Robert Helpmann – so courteous and kind to her at some party where she felt out of place. What had been the occasion? Was it with some of Harry’s bohemian friends? Probably. Not that Harry had stayed bohemian for long. After the huge success of Foremost First, which Michael Langham produced, Harry had bought his first car, a Vauxhall Sniper Gazelle, of all things. A thousand pounds, it had cost. An absolutely enormous sum of money in those days. She remembered driving to see that revue with Tommy Cooper and Shirley Bassey, Blue Magic, in the days when you could park just about anywhere in London in the evenings, and then for supper at a jazz club…
No one ever told you, when you were young, that it wouldn’t last. Well, maybe they did, but you never listened, never believed. People would laugh, nowadays, at the suggestion that the fifties had ever been a time of glamour, of wonderful innocence mixed with perfect sophistication. For them, the decade was an Osbert Lancaster joke. But in certain innocent ways the fifties had been glamorous and shining. She knew. She had been there.
The next day Adam spent the morning on the phone to two commissioning editors, trying to whip up a bit of interest in an idea for a series of articles on women’s prisons, and chasing up money for articles for which he hadn’t yet been paid. In some superstitious way, he didn’t want to eat into the large slice of the advance which presently sat in his bank account. What if he never finished this biography? The thought of having to pay the money back haunted him. It was difficult to find time for both the biography and his freelance work, but he had already determined that he would spend that afternoon following up the mystery man in the wedding photograph. He had a feeling that it might not be time wasted.
Armed with the photograph, he set off for the London Library. Painstakingly he looked up books on fifties and sixties Soho, trying to assess which ones would produce most in the way of photographs. The list he finished up with was dispiritingly long, covering both biography and topography, and it took him some time, tramping through the echoing rows and stacks, to track down volumes which looked as though they would be any good.
He sat in the hush of the reading room, turning the pages in search of photographs, soon feeling thoroughly nauseated by black-and-white fifties images of depressing streets, battered faces, smoky nightclubs and dreary pubs. Until he opened the fourth volume. He had hardly flicked through the first few pages, not much expecting to find anything, when there was a picture of his man, flanked by a very young Jeffrey Bernard with his coat collar turned up against the shiverings of another morning hangover, and Jeffrey’s brother, Bruce. Once again the anonymous man was staring directly at the camera in a defiant fashion, one that made everyone else in the photo redundant.
Adam’s eyes flicked to the caption. Bruce and Jeffrey Bernard with the photographer George Meacher.
George Meacher. The name rang bells, but not very clear ones. Perhaps he was dead. Most of the people from that era seemed to be, except for George Melly. Adam flicked through to the index and looked up the final listing for Meacher. According to this book, an account of Soho life from the thirties to the sixties, George Meacher had still been alive and kicking at the time of the book’s publication in the early nineties, so there was reason to hope he was still around. Adam turned back to the photo of Meacher with the Bernard brothers, and studied the gimlet eyes. Meacher had an indestructible look about him. Adam closed the book, and thought for a few moments. Perhaps Giles could help him.
In his former career as a journalist, Giles had started off as a staff reporter on the Express – a job that seemed to have consisted of endless drinking at Poppins and other Fleet Street watering holes. Adam enjoyed the sense of vicarious nostalgia engendered by Giles’s tales of Fleet Street’s golden age, before the diaspora, when idleness and drunkenness had apparently gone hand-in-hand with journalistic brilliance. Giles, partly because he enjoyed the company of writers and artists, and partly because he would drink anywhere with anyone, had been a frequenter not only of Fleet Street boozers but of Soho pubs, so there was a very good chance that he knew something of George Meacher, dead or alive.
Adam rang Giles when he got home.
‘Meacher? God, what a poisonous little man. What’s the interest in him?’
‘He was a friend of Harry Day’s. At least, I think he was. Back in the fifties.’
‘Might have been. I wasn’t knocking around Soho then. Still in short pants. I knew Meacher, though. I used to avoid him like the plague.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Well, he was when I last saw him, a couple of months ago. Horrible little piece of work. He was quite a good photographer in his day – well, right place, right time – but he had a vicious tongue on him. I hated the little bastard. So did plenty of people. Some of them found him amusing. I didn’t. He was two-faced, and a cadger.’
‘How can I get in touch with him?’
‘Well, you could stand outside the Coach and Horses for a couple of days. He’s bound to turn up. I haven’t got a phone number, or anything like that. I don’t even know where he lives. Don’t know him well enough. I just see him in pubs now and again.’ There was a pause. ‘Leave it with me. I
’ll see what I can do.’
The next day Giles rang Adam.
‘I’ve tracked him down, and he’s agreed to meet you.’
‘Giles, you’re a genius. When?’
‘He said he’s usually in The French House at opening time. You can find him there. Be prepared to buy him lunch as well as a criminal amount of alcohol.’
‘Great,’ said Adam. ‘I take it he knows what it’s about, and will be happy to talk?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Giles. ‘Only I wouldn’t expect the unvarnished truth. He’s a horrible little liar.’
4
Bella had arranged to meet Charlie for a drink after work. She was in rehearsals for a new production of a Joe Orton play at the Ambassador’s, and the walk to Charlie’s chambers in the Temple took a mere ten minutes. They met in this way as often as Bella’s schedule allowed – sometimes for lunch, sometimes for a drink. Despite the differences in their enthusiasms and temperaments, the relationship was a close, affectionate one, grounded in constant companionship throughout childhood, including the progressive co-educational boarding school in Hampshire which they had attended together until the age of fourteen, and which Charlie had wholeheartedly hated. Charlie was a boy who liked structure and discipline, and the liberal ethos of the place, which had suited Bella entirely, made him uneasy and miserable. Bella had been something of a protector and comforter during these years, until Charlie, using a combination of wheedling and threats, had persuaded his mother to send him to Uppingham, which he had heard about from a boy whom he had met during the school holidays, and which Charlie thought sounded much more his type of school. He had flourished there, discovering like-minded souls who enjoyed rugby and bossing people around, and was genuinely appreciative of a hierarchy based upon seniority and sporting prowess as much as intellectual and creative ability.
They always went to the same wine bar in Essex Street, and Charlie was generally there before Bella. He was rigorously punctual, even with social appointments, a quality in which Bella was deeply deficient. This evening, however, Charlie was twenty minutes late. Bella sat with a paperback book, trying to pretend she was unaware of the frequent glances she attracted from every man in the place. Even when she felt, as she did today, that she was at her bedraggled worst, in old jeans, trainers and an outsize Barbour (one which had belonged to her father and which she had sentimentally retrieved on her last visit to Gandercleugh), men always looked at her, while trying to pretend at the same time that they weren’t. She knew she should be used to it by now, but it was most annoying not being able to glance around in an ordinary kind of way, for fear of making unwished-for eye-contact.
Suddenly there was Charlie, sliding into a chair opposite Bella and slapping down a rolled-up copy of the evening paper. He was out of breath. ‘Sorry I’m late. Rowley heard today that he’s been made a QC, so we had a couple of glasses in chambers by way of celebration. I could hardly say no.’
‘Why didn’t you ring me on my mobile to say you’d be late?’
‘Don’t grumble. I’ll get us a drink.’ Charlie took off his coat and went to the bar.
Glancing up, Bella saw a man standing near Charlie at the bar, dark-haired, wearing a raincoat, his back to her. For a moment she thought it was Adam Downing, but he half-turned and it wasn’t. To her relief. She still felt angry and a little embarrassed at the recollection of that evening at Gandercleugh. No man had ever turned her down before. Not that she made a habit of propositioning men, but when, in propitious physical and social circumstances, there seemed to be raging mutual attraction, she could see no good reason for not taking the initiative. In fact, given the way most men seemed to be somewhat in awe of her – Bella always thought it quite ludicrous to be thus perceived, but accepted it as her inevitable lot – it was often positively necessary to do so. Of course, the way he had behaved didn’t do him any favours – it merely marked him out as a prig. She had reassured herself on this point often enough. The girlfriend factor could scarcely be counted. On Bella’s scale of morality, playing away, provided it didn’t inconvenience or upset anyone, was perfectly acceptable. Notions of fidelity were boring, and conventions there to be broken. No, she didn’t think much of Adam Downing. Which didn’t prevent her from mentioning him almost as soon as Charlie had sat down with two glasses of wine.
‘Did Adam Downing ever get in touch with you? The journalist who’s writing the biography?’
‘Not so far. I gave him my card that evening, but he hasn’t rung.’
‘Maybe he’s lost interest in the project, now that Dad’s dead.’
‘Quite the opposite, surely?’
Bella shrugged. ‘I rang and left Mother’s number and address on his answering machine, and he never rang back to thank me.’ She wasn’t sure whether she had hoped or expected that Adam would call her back. She only knew that the unsatisfactory balance between them had to be redressed somehow.
‘Oh, he’s been in touch with Cecile. I spoke to her last night. He went round to see her the other day and spent a couple of hours there. I think she enjoyed it. She even lent him some photographs.’
The knowledge that Adam hadn’t abandoned the project, and would therefore have to make contact with her again at some point, pleased her. Bella took a sip of her wine and leaned back with a sigh.
‘How are your rehearsals going?’
Bella gave a groan.
‘It’s an Orton, isn’t it?’
‘Funeral Games. Which about sums it up.’ She took another sip of wine. ‘No, actually, it isn’t too bad. I just find it hard to get my head round the humour. De-frocked priests and bodies in the cellar. Still, according to my agent, appearing in a radical revival of a lesser-known play by a sixties icon is good for my image. God knows what the critics will make of it. It has some fairly iffy lines.’
‘I thought that was the point of Orton.’
‘Yes, well – political correctness seems to have brought things full circle.’ The dark-haired man in the raincoat went out. Bella was still half-thinking about Adam. It was annoying how he stuck in her mind. ‘Getting back to this biography… Are you all right about it?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be some kind of hagiography. Awful word. What if Adam Downing unearths all kinds of things we’d rather not see in print?’
Charlie laughed. ‘Come on. Dad led a fairly unconventional life, but most of it has already been well covered. I don’t think there are going to be many surprises. I’d be more worried if he’d led an apparently quiet, blameless life.’
‘And you think you’ll be all right talking about him?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You’re a barrister – you should know. When people start to ask you questions, all kinds of things can come out. I mean, you might surprise yourself. It might be upsetting, talking about him.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Charlie shook his head, wanting to change the subject. ‘Listen, we have to talk about the house in France.’
‘What’s to talk about?’
‘I mean, it’s great, Dad leaving us both the house, but I want to know what we’re going to do about it.’
‘Do?’
‘Well, it was fine for Dad – he and Briony could go and spend as much time there as they wanted, more or less. Now it’s just sitting there.’
‘What are you talking about? We can use it. I fully intend to. We’ll work something out between us.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s all right for you – you’ll get out there far more often than I will. The point is, I’d honestly rather we sold the place and split the proceeds.’
Bella was astonished. In her mind, the house in France was sacred territory. Harry had bought Montresor back in the seventies, after he and Cecile had split up, when it had been just an abandoned, ancient farmhouse in the Lot. It had taken Harry years to put it into shape, gradually turning the rooms into marvels of exposed wood and stone, building the sw
imming pool, bringing the orchard back to life, planting the vines that now covered the trellis which shaded the long terrace. It was there that the twins had spent most of the time they had had with Harry. Gandercleugh was for occasional weekends, half-term holidays, and Bella had never much liked its gloomy atmosphere. Besides, it was Briony’s now. Montresor was summer holidays, sunshine, her childhood. How could Charlie possibly want to sell it?
He read all this in her eyes as she stared at him.
‘Don’t look like that. Frankly, Bell, I need the money.’
‘You can’t need the money! Not that badly. Not badly enough to sell Montresor.’
Charlie sighed. ‘Claire’s found a house near Lewes. She’s set her heart on it. A Georgian manor house. Three acres, lots of rooms, tennis court, swimming pool… If we’re going to be able to put in an offer, I need the capital.’
‘Why does she need a Georgian manor house, for God’s sake? Can’t she start married life somewhere more modest? Most people do.’
‘Well, she says that if we want a family, we need a proper family home. We don’t want to be moving in ten years’ time. She wants somewhere she can feel settled.’
‘She wants somewhere she can swank about, more like. Why do you let her put that kind of strain on you, Charlie? All these expectations…’
‘To be honest, Bell, that’s not really your concern. I’d like to buy the house, too. That’s why I need the money. If you’re so keen to hang on to Montresor, why don’t you buy out my half?’
‘With what? What makes you think I’ve got that kind of money? Just because I’ve made a couple of half-decent films doesn’t mean I’m rolling in it. Do you know how much this Orton play pays? You don’t want to, believe me. It’s all I can do to keep the flat in Beaufort Street going.’
‘If we sold it, you’d get your share of the capital, and you could buy somewhere in the same area. Something smaller, but still a holiday place.’