Familiar Rooms in Darkness

by Caro Fraser

‘Not soon,’ said Cecile. ‘There’s always a decent interval of obscurity after a writer dies. Maybe in fifteen or twenty years. We shall see – or at any rate, you shall… But I hope, for Bella’s sake, that Funeral Games does better than the critics have suggested. Have you seen it?’

  ‘I’m planning to go next week.’

  Adam rose, and Cecile went with him to the front door. They stood together for a hesitant moment, and then Cecile said, ‘You know, it might be a kindness to everyone involved if your book didn’t touch on this part of Harry’s life.’

  ‘That’s asking a lot.’

  ‘I know. Of course, I could have simply denied that any of it ever happened, and tried to conceal it that way. But you already knew, so that would have been pointless. So I’m appealing to – to your better nature, if you like. I don’t see what good it will do anyone for these things to be brought out.’

  Adam didn’t know what to say. ‘I intend to be no more than truthful. But no less. I can’t–’

  ‘You can. You have a conscience.’ Her voice rose, trembling a little. ‘Don’t you think you’ve already unearthed enough things that Harry might have wished left alone?’

  Adam turned and walked down the path to the garden gate. ‘I’ll be in touch. I won’t do anything without speaking to you again. I promise.’

  Driving back across London, Adam reflected on Cecile’s attempt to appeal to his conscience in the matter of Harry’s youthful indiscretions. This was surely just the beginning. Once the rest of the family knew, the pressure not to publish would grow, and would inevitably be less gentle than Cecile’s dignified supplication. If it were a matter of conscience, as Cecile had suggested, he didn’t see how he could be selective with the truth. Presumably Cecile didn’t want any mention made of it because, by the standards of her generation, the revelations were to Harry’s discredit. But were they? Adam couldn’t decide. By today’s standards, one would say not, but Adam knew in his bones that there was a wider moral perspective to this. It was more a question of hypocrisy, of concealment. Smokescreens, as Compton-King had put it. And, if he were honest with himself, this aspect added the touch of sensationalism which the book badly needed. No – he would not be baulked by Harry’s family. As he formed this resolution, Adam was dimly aware that a streak of ruthlessness had entered his soul.

  When Adam had gone, Cecile began to clear away the teacups. She moved slowly, her mind still working on the conversation which had just taken place. Whatever Briony and Harry had assumed about that young man, they were guilty of a serious underestimation. Or complacency, at the very least. Adam Downing had certainly done his homework… unearthing Richard Compton-King, of all people. What a charmer he had been. She paused by the sink, staring across the garden, across the years. Afternoons in that cramped little flat of his in Greek Street. Rain on the windows.

  After a few moments she turned and went to the telephone. There were several seconds of tiresome negotiation with Briony’s PA, Peter, before she managed to get through to Briony herself. Really, the woman behaved as though she were Elizabeth Taylor…

  ‘Briony? It’s Cecile. I thought you should know that Adam Downing came to see me again today. He’s dug up an old friend of Harry’s – and mine. Someone with a nice, long memory who isn’t at all interested in protecting anyone’s reputation, much.’

  ‘Who?’ Briony’s voice at the other end was sharp, anxious.

  ‘His name is Richard Compton-King.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Well, that’s neither here nor there, dear. He knew both of us very well at one time. Mr Downing has just been plaguing me with questions – quite tactful questions, naturally – about young men that Harry was cavorting with back in the days when we were married.’ Cecile’s tone was dry and light, in contrast to Briony’s anxiety.

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘Well, I was as honest as I could be. Given the extent of his knowledge, there seemed little point in lying. But I think I managed to convey the impression that it was all a youthful aberration, nothing of any consequence or duration. He did ask whether you knew. Of course I said I had no idea, that he would have to ask you.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful! That’s the last thing I need.’

  ‘You needn’t sound so cross with me. It’s not my job to throw shadows and protect you from scrutiny. Or the things you get up to on the quiet. I had a lifetime of equivocation when I was married to Harry. It’s up to you to look after yourself. I’m quite sure you can deal with Adam Downing. Besides,’ added Cecile reflectively, ‘I don’t actually think he’s looking for trouble, you know.’

  ‘If Adam Downing wants my continued cooperation,’ said Briony evenly, ‘he’ll have to be very careful not to stray into areas where his intrusion is unwelcome.’

  ‘Well, now, if I were a journalist,’ said Cecile, ‘I think that kind of attitude would rather whet my appetite – don’t you think? Good luck fending him off, at any rate, dear. Who knows? He may not think it worth asking you about.’

  Briony sincerely doubted that, and she was right. Adam rang the very next day.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m very busy, Adam,’ said Briony when she came on the line. ‘I can’t talk to you for long.’ She had hesitated before letting Peter put the call through, but had decided there was no point in putting Adam off. She might as well dispose of the problem sooner rather than later.

  ‘It’s not something I really want to discuss over the phone,’ said Adam. ‘I wondered if there was some time we could meet.’

  He heard Briony sigh impatiently at the other end. ‘I have to come up to town on Wednesday to see my agent. I suppose I can spare you half an hour.’

  Distinctly offhand, thought Adam. Had Cecile tipped her off? He recalled very clearly the way the two women had stood together outside the church after Harry’s memorial service, their shared composure. Guarding something. Guarding Harry? Guarding themselves?

  ‘That’s kind of you. Where do you suggest?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘The American Bar at the Ritz is as good a place as any. I’ll be there around six.’

  Adam hesitated. It was very public, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else more suitable. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  He hung up, reflecting on the contribution made thus far to the biography by Briony Nugent, forty-something spun sugar, bright with daytime-television glamour and elfin charm, and hard as nails. She had been at pains to present Harry and herself as a devoted couple, with a loving and idyllic marriage, he in the autumn of his years, living quietly with his young (youngish) wife in their country home, at peace with his poetry, she devoted and attentive, dividing her busy time between TV commitments and caring for Harry during his final illness. A lot of OK! magazine tosh, a PR exercise in the furtherance of Briony Nugent’s public image. Still, even Briony’s version of events must possess its own strange veracity. It was just that Adam suspected there might be something more to it than that.

  Adam sat in the Ritz for half an hour on Wednesday evening, waiting for Briony, spinning out an extremely expensive dry martini and trying to work out the best way to broach his subject. He had deliberately chosen a table tucked away in the corner, which seemed private enough. Only a handful of people were in the bar.

  When she appeared at last, Briony crossed the room quickly, as if to draw minimum attention to herself. She looked as immaculate as ever, but her eyes were tired, and her expression as she greeted Adam lacked any warmth. She ordered a whisky cocktail, and offered Adam no apology for her lateness.

  ‘I imagine this has to do with the biography?’ she asked. ‘I must say I was surprised you wanted to see me. I think by now you know all I have to tell you.’

  ‘Something new has come up,’ said Adam. ‘It’s to do with a part of Harry’s life that nobody has touched on. Ever. Not even Harry himself.’

  Was there the smallest flicker around the pretty eyes, the tiniest change of expression? She said nothing,
so Adam went on. ‘Since we don’t have long, I’ll come straight to the point. I’ve run down an interesting source, a man who was friendly with Harry back in the sixties. Not someone on Harry’s accredited list of friends and relations.’ Briony’s drink arrived. She picked it up and took a sip. ‘His story is that Harry’s sexual proclivities around that time included young men. It was something I had to put to Cecile, naturally, and she confirmed it.’

  Nothing tactful or apologetic here, thought Briony. She had given some thought as to how she was going to play this, but she paused for a moment before replying. She gazed at Adam reflectively. Where had the nice, deferential young man of last summer gone? Or could it be that Harry had been deceived by something as trivial as good manners? Wearing an expression of mild surprise, she said, ‘I don’t quite understand why you see the need to talk to me about it.’

  ‘I wondered if it was something Harry ever discussed with you.’ He could tell from the coolness of her reaction that he hadn’t shocked her, that it was something she’d already known about. From whom? Harry, or Cecile?

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you knew about it?’

  Again Briony paused for some seconds before replying. ‘It was long in the past. Call it a youthful indiscretion, if you like. I imagine it’s not that unusual.’

  ‘It’s just that… well, a tendency like that doesn’t generally just fade away.’ Adam was making an effort to keep his tone light, appeasing.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that it may have been an enduring part of Harry’s life. I wondered to what lengths someone might go to conceal certain things. Especially someone who grew up in an era when to be a known homosexual could spell certain disaster.’

  ‘How ridiculous.’ Briony’s tone was cool and dismissive. ‘No person could keep up such a pretence for an entire lifetime.’

  ‘People have. Any number.’

  ‘I think I would have known, don’t you?’

  ‘You pre-empted me. I was just about to add that it might call for a certain amount of collusion on the part of friends and family.’

  Briony drank the remains of her cocktail. ‘I’ve been very polite to you so far, Adam. What you are suggesting is both offensive and potentially libellous. I suggest you limit the scope of your book to the areas defined by my husband while he was alive.’ Her eyes were suddenly bright with indignant tears, and she reached into her bag for a tissue. ‘I don’t know how you can embark on such crude speculation concerning someone who befriended and trusted you in the months before he died.’

  Adam, reminding himself that Briony was a consummate actress, endeavoured to remain unmoved. ‘I’ve no wish to upset you or your family. But we know now that Harry was capable of deceiving those close to him.’

  ‘We were all shocked by the business of the adoption. There were mistakes made, and reasons for those mistakes, I’m sure. You say you have no wish to upset the family, but don’t you think you’ve done enough in that direction?’

  ‘I’m writing a biography, Briony.’

  ‘Of an admired and cherished writer, I would remind you. If Harry made a few excusable mistakes in his youth, you’d serve his memory better by ignoring them, instead of trying to fabricate this kind of sensationalist rubbish just to sell your book.’

  ‘I’m merely trying to establish the truth.’

  ‘The truth is that Harry was a wonderful man, a wonderful husband, a wonderful writer, and a wonderful father!’ Briony leaned forward, her words clear and icy. ‘Your role is no more than that of a parasite, Adam. If you try to discredit his memory, I will sue you.’ She gathered her possessions together and stood up. ‘I’m beginning to wish he’d never employed you to write his biography.’

  I’ll bet you are, thought Adam, watching as she left the bar, wondering just what it was that she was so anxious to protect. Despite what she said, he suspected it wasn’t Harry’s reputation, but something rather closer to home.

  In a West End already struggling against the beginnings of recession, Funeral Games was not going as well as its producers had hoped. A fortnight after its opening, when Adam went to see it, the audience numbered just thirty-six. He had chosen to go on an evening when Megan was working. For some reason, he wanted to go alone. The play turned out to be better and far more amusing than he had expected, and Bella, it seemed to him, was very good. It afforded him particular pleasure, of an infatuated kind, to watch her perform. Everything she did seemed charged with erotic, faintly dangerous undertones, though he could see that she was probably too young and lovely for the part, and not earthy enough. For which he gave thanks.

  He went to the stage door when the play was over and asked to see her, giving the doorman his name. He was admitted backstage, and found Bella in her cramped dressing room, taking off her make-up.

  ‘Did you like it?’ she asked, glancing in the mirror at his face.

  ‘I did. Very much. You were very good.’

  She sighed. ‘I like doing it. The play’s fun. But what a lousy house.’

  ‘I thought Wednesdays tended to be quiet nights.’

  ‘Not this quiet. Last night and Monday night were hardly any better.’ She chucked a used ball of cotton wool into the bin and rubbed her face with a towel. ‘Anyway, thanks for coming.’

  ‘I wanted to. I wanted to see you. The play, I mean.’

  She smiled. ‘You didn’t bring the girlfriend. Wasn’t she keen?’

  ‘She’s at a Botox party.’

  ‘A what?’ Bella laughed.

  ‘I know,’ sighed Adam. ‘It’s the work she does, she’s into all that stuff. She actually came home from work the other day with a pair of pre-laddered tights. Some promotional thing that a fashion house sent to her office. She thought they were fantastic.’

  Bella laughed, and gave him a glance in the mirror. ‘How’s the biography going?’

  ‘So-so. It’s coming along. The trouble is – or rather, it shouldn’t be trouble, it should be excellent, really… from my point of view, I mean, though not necessarily from other people’s–’

  ‘What? You’re beginning to ramble.’

  Adam leaned against the edge of the dressing table and folded his arms. Bella had a sudden urge, which she resisted, to stretch out her hand and run it the length of his thigh. ‘I keep turning up unexpected pieces of information, things no one appears to have discovered about your father before.’

  ‘As in…?’

  ‘As in–’ He stopped and glanced at her. ‘I actually meant to take you for a drink after you’d finished tonight and talk to you about it.’

  She examined her nails. ‘You should have rung. I might be busy. I might be too tired.’

  ‘Are you? Either of those things?’

  ‘Busy – no. Tired – yes. But not too tired. Wait at the stage door while I get changed.’

  They went to a quiet downstairs wine bar near the theatre, and Adam bought a couple of glasses of Chablis. Bella leaned back against the wall, propped her feet against the rung of the chair next to her, and took a sip of her wine. Adam sat opposite, thinking how childlike her oval face looked, bereft of any trace of make-up, still a little shiny from being creamed and towelled. He liked the fact that she had to make no effort at all to look lovely.

  ‘Please don’t think me rude, but I don’t want this to last too long,’ she said. ‘I’m really bushed.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Adam. ‘It’s not much to tell. I’ve already spoken to Cecile about it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well –’ Adam paused, trying to find the right words. ‘It seems that your father had quite a colourful sexual career before he met your mother. That is to say, apparently he liked boys as well as girls.’ Christ, thought Adam, how twee did that sound?

  ‘Gay? My father?’ Bella regarded him with astonished eyes, then said firmly, ‘He was not gay.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. Not quite. From what I can gather… Well, look, Cecile’s line is that he got caugh
t up in the gay scene while he was living in Soho, but that she managed to straighten him out.’

  ‘I mean,’ went on Bella, as though she hadn’t heard him, ‘I’m not saying it would matter if he had been. Fine. I don’t care. I have absolutely nothing against anyone being gay. Nothing at all. It’s perfectly fine. I’m just saying that my father wasn’t, that’s all.’ She took a long drink of her wine.

  Adam nodded. ‘No, I understand that. What I –’

  Adam’s previous words seemed suddenly to have registered with her. ‘Who said he was caught up in the gay scene? My mother said that?’

  ‘She – she corroborated it. It was someone else who told me. A man called Richard Compton-King. Do you know him?’

  Bella shook her head. ‘Never even heard the name.’

  ‘No, well… He knew Harry very well back in the sixties. When I put it to Cecile, she didn’t go off the rails, or anything. She was very good about it. Said she’d known about it before she and Harry married. I think it was something she came to terms with, and from what she says, it eventually stopped. Or so she says.’ He regarded Bella anxiously, afraid this was more problematic for her than he had anticipated. Since they both came from a supposedly enlightened generation, he had imagined she would accept news of Harry’s brief foray into bisexuality with equanimity. Whatever she was thinking, she was murdering her wine. Her glass was nearly empty.

  But Bella’s agitation seemed to be levelling out. She sat thinking, frowning, for a while. ‘Are you going to put this in the book?’

  Adam considered this for a few seconds. ‘Your mother asked me not to. But I don’t see how I can leave it out.’

  ‘I see. Well, you have to do what you think is right.’ She made a wry face. ‘At least Charlie won’t have to go into agonies over it.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean that when he finds out about this, Charlie will probably be relieved by the fact that Harry wasn’t our real father. Otherwise he’d be convinced it was something genetic, and that he must be like that. I’m not saying,’ added Bella quickly, ‘that Charlie is bothered about anyone being gay–’