An Absolute Scandal

by Penny Vincenzi

  Blue had cancelled lunch with Lucinda. “Sorry, Lucy, got to do a bit of schmoozing. Another day.”

  “Blue, it’s fine. Honestly.”

  She smiled at him; he grinned back, came over to where she lay in their bed, and gave her a kiss.

  “Love me?”

  “Of course I do. You know I do. I was proving it like anything last night, remember?”

  She smiled at him, snuggled down again under the duvet. It was one of the best things about Blue’s early starts; she could go back to sleep for a whole hour afterwards. But now maybe she should fix that lunch with Simon. He had seemed at a bit of a loose end, poor darling. It must be so awful for him, not having a job anymore. She’d ring him when she got into the office—it was too early now—and suggest it.

  It had been a particularly busy morning at Jenkins and Jenkins, insurance brokers, the phones ringing nonstop. Maurice Crane, one of the executives there, took off his spectacles as lunchtime approached, rubbed his eyes, and thought that he really was getting too old for all this.

  He sent up a small prayer of gratitude that retirement was now only a few months away and made his way to the gents’ before going out for his customary roast-beef sandwich.

  As he pushed open the door, he felt suddenly rather dizzy and put out his hand to steady himself on the doorframe; felt a little better and stepped forward. And slipped on a patch of water on the tile floor and fell heavily.

  He was found only a few minutes later, and half an hour after that he was lying on a trolley in Casualty at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with a fractured femur. His leg was put in plaster and he was sent home in an ambulance, and told he would need several weeks off work to recover.

  Maurice Crane, looking out of the window at his sun-filled garden, felt that this was not an entirely cruel blow on the part of Fate.

  “Debbie, it’s Joel. Sorry about earlier.”

  “That’s OK.”

  She’d just been deciding to finish whatever it was she had with him. It was too dangerous, it was foolish, he clearly didn’t care about her in the least—and why should he?

  “How are you?”

  “Oh, fine. Yes, thank you.” She was trying very hard not to think how sexy his voice was.

  “How are things at home?”

  “Oh, you know. All right. Bit strained. He’s trying really hard to be nice. Joel—”

  “Sorry. Look, I don’t know when we can meet. I—I’d like to though. Of course.”

  “Yes, me too. But Joel—”

  “So when?”

  “Well,” she said—now come on, Debbie, this is the moment, just tell him, tell him there’s no point seeing him. “Well, Richard’s going to go down to Wales again next week. So that’s a possibility. Although Flora’s got some agricultural show she wants us to go to. Exciting, huh?”

  “You could make anything exciting, Debbie. So next week’s a possibility, yes?”

  “Oh yes. Definitely a possibility. Or definitely hopefully as they say in Wales.”

  He laughed. “I like that. OK, well definitely hopefully next week then.”

  And maybe by next week she’d feel clearer about what she wanted to do.

  “You haven’t heard from Simon today, have you?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “Oh, I just wanted to get hold of him. There’s no reply at home. If he rings you, could you ask him to call me?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Bye, Debbie. Definitely hopefully next week then.”

  “Definitely hopefully.”

  “Elizabeth?” It was Peter Hargreaves on the internal line. “Any news from Simon yet?”

  “No.” She frowned at her watch. “He should have called by now. It’s nearly five. I’ll give him another thirty minutes and then ring the Yacht Club. He’s probably propping up the bar, forgotten the time.”

  It was after six when Elizabeth finally got hold of David Green. “Sorry, Elizabeth, no news from the old bugger yet…No, he went out on his own in the end. I had too much to do here. I’ve been trying to radio him, but the bloody thing seems to be switched off…Yes, of course I’ll ring you the minute I hear…What’s that?…No, no, he didn’t take his mobile phone. Said it would sink the boat…Sorry?…No, the weather’s been OK. Well, bit of a squall mid-Channel this afternoon, but nothing Simon couldn’t handle. Good God, he’s been sailing all his life.”

  That phrase haunted Elizabeth all that long, terrible night: until reports came in early next day of a sailing boat found drifting mid-Channel, its boom flapping and no sign of anyone on board.

  Simon had indeed been sailing all his life. All his life, right up to the moment it ended.

  Chapter 38

  AUGUST 1990

  Elizabeth had always said that she would be able to bear anything except the loss of one of her children. She was discovering she was wrong. She couldn’t bear the death of her husband, either.

  There was no happiness, no comfort, no pleasure, no relief from the pain. It was so agonising that she quite often found herself fighting for breath, as if it was physical, boring into her body instead of her heart or her head or wherever the grief was precisely felt.

  The body—how could it have happened that her brilliant, handsome, charming husband had become a body—had been washed up on a beach near Gravelines, just north of Calais in the afternoon of 26 August. They knew it was Simon because his passport was still in the pocket of his jeans.

  After three more days, endless, hideous days, Simon’s body was taken to the mortuary in the Kensington and Fulham Hospital and she was asked to go and identify it formally. By now, friends had been notified, and they had formed a sort of rota, made sure that she had someone on call night and day.

  David Green went with her to the mortuary where they were shown into a waiting area. A man came in, holding out his hand to her. “Robert Jeffries. I’m the coroner’s officer. I’d like to pretend I was in charge, but I’m afraid I’m not.”

  Elizabeth smiled at him obediently while marvelling that her facial muscles would do anything so extraordinary.

  Robert Jeffries explained that there was no need for her to actually look at the body, he would be satisfied if she identified Simon from some photographs.

  When the photographs were brought, the effort required to lift her eyes and to look at them was so stupendous that for quite a while she simply couldn’t do it. And then although it was totally horrible and nauseating and she wanted to be sick, because of what the body was like, bloated and frigid, it wasn’t actually quite so terrible, because it wasn’t Simon lying there. All the clichés about empty shells and the lights being on but no one at home were absolutely true.

  This…this body in the photographs had Simon’s hair and Simon’s face—just—but it had nothing to do with the warm, charming, loving man she had been married to…It really wasn’t the worst thing: not by a long way.

  The worst thing was not knowing. Not knowing if he had chosen to kill himself, if he had been unable to face life any longer. Or if it had indeed been an accident, that he had been knocked overboard, possibly by the untethered boom, and had desperately tried to get back on board. That was a dreadful thought, of course: but not as dreadful as that he had deliberately turned his back on her, on all of them, found them wanting, unable to give him sufficient hope and courage to carry on.

  She just didn’t believe he could have done that to her, to their children, shown them such dreadful wilful cruelty.

  When she felt a little better, Mr. Jeffries took them to a café for some tea, which to her amazement she did seem to want, and said that he wondered if she realised that there would be an inquest.

  “The purpose of which is to establish who the deceased is, and when, where, and how he came by his death. The how and when a person died, but not why. There is no question of apportioning any blame on any individual. It’s important you understand that.”

  She nodded feebly and said
she did.

  “Good. Now it’s my job to investigate the death rather than the cause of death, which will be the postmortem result, and then to present the evidence in court.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “There has been a postmortem performed in France. I can give you the details of that, if you would like.”

  She said she felt she had to know as much as she possibly could, however much it hurt.

  There had been no evidence of anything suspicious going on, Mr. Jeffries said, of a fight or anything like that; no injuries to the body, except a bruise and swelling to the back of the head, presumably caused by the swinging boom which had possibly knocked him into the water. He had been wearing a life jacket but it was not inflated; but this would not have been for any sinister reason, Elizabeth explained. There were two types of life jacket: one which inflated automatically on contact with the water, and one which required a tug of its cord to inflate it.

  “The thing is, you see, the automatic sort are more cumbersome; a lot of people don’t like them, there’s been considerable debate about them.”

  Mr. Jeffries nodded and made further notes. “And then toxicology has revealed the presence of some alcohol, not an inordinate amount, perhaps the equivalent of two or three glasses of wine, and also the presence of some analgesia. Again, nothing excessive, possibly a couple of paracetamol. But of course, those would interact with the alcohol.

  “He wasn’t on any medication permanently? Was his health good?”

  Very good, she said, and he wasn’t on any medication.

  What about his state of mind? Jeffries asked. Had he been depressed about anything? She denied the depression, simply said that he had considerable financial worries, that he had lost a lot of money to Lloyd’s, and his job as well, that he was very worried.

  “But he was fighting back; he was in the throes of taking out a lawsuit against Lloyd’s. He was being very positive, he was like that.”

  “I’m sure,” Jeffries said gently, and then asked what Simon had been doing the day before he went off. Had he seen anyone who might have heard him say something, or…

  “He saw lots of people,” she said, and said she would try to make a list of people he might have contacted.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Beaumont, that would be very helpful.” He hesitated. “It’s usual to talk to the GP, the bank manager, people like that, if you could add those names to the list.”

  She got the impression he saw suicide as a very real possibility, which made her more inclined to think it too. But—that was no good; she had to believe in him, in his absolute determination to win, whatever life threw at him. That had characterised him all his life; she would not allow herself to think it had changed.

  Mercifully the children took this view; it didn’t seem to occur to them that their father might have taken his own life, although Annabel was beside herself, afraid she had made his last hours unhappy.

  “I went on and on about my stupid wedding! God, I’m such a stupid selfish idiot.” She cried for hours while Elizabeth tried to comfort her, to reassure her; where she got the strength from, she had no idea.

  At first, the official view seemed to be that it had been a dreadful accident; but when they knew more about his financial situation, the sky darkened further; the debt to Lloyd’s, his having been fired, made suicide seem increasingly likely. They took statements from his doctor, from colleagues, from friends, from Elizabeth herself; she supplied them with a list of everyone he had seen, or might have seen in those final few days.

  “And before you dare to ask me about our marriage,” Elizabeth said, a rush of hostile emotion focusing against the extremely pleasant young man who was questioning her, “let me tell you it was happier than it’s ever been.”

  But some frightened and remorseful part of her still felt that Simon might have decided that enough was finally more than enough. In which case, she surely must bear some of the blame.

  Chapter 39

  AUGUST 1990

  It was, everyone said afterwards, a very splendid funeral. Simon would have loved it, lots of them also said. Elizabeth felt vaguely comforted. Organising it had somehow removed her from the grief and anxiety of the rest of her life and gave her a focus. She was determined that it would be as colourful, and as musically diverse, as she could manage.

  Simon was a sworn agnostic, but he had always rather liked churches, insisted on visiting any he came across on their holidays. He was enchanted by them all, as much by the tiny village churches of the Cotswolds and of Sussex as by the vast sky-brushing vaults of the cathedrals of England and France. He loved the small whitewashed churches of the Greek islands, the gilded mosques of India, and the gloriously ornate duomos of Italy: and perhaps most of all the small clapboard, tin-roofed churches of the Bahamas and Key West.

  He loved music too, although, “I’m a bit Radio Two,” he would say apologetically, and he liked the more popular operas (La Bohème never failed to make him cry) and the more popular composers. “I’ll go up to Mozart soon,” he would say to Elizabeth. “Just one more year of Beethoven first.” And he loved singing, his easy baritone voice joyfully loud at carol concerts and weddings. And even other people’s funerals. “I think we owe it to them to do our best,” he had once said to Elizabeth before the funeral of an old school friend who had died of cancer. “He deserves a jolly good effort, send him on his way,” and sang “To Be a Pilgrim” staunchly to the end, tears streaming down his face. And he loved the music of words, loved the poets, loved Shakespeare and what he called “the proper words” of the Bible, the King James version. The children had all said they would like to read; and Tilly, who was the most musical, had helped draw up a short list. The church was to be Chelsea Old Church, and, absurdly, she gave a lot of thought to what she would wear; it seemed to matter that she would look right, that Simon would have liked it. She settled on red, her favourite, and the colour Simon had always loved her in: a dark red jacket over a black skirt and black camisole, and her favourite high-heeled Manolos, and she had gone to Harvey Nichols for a new hat, a wide-brimmed straw with black feathers wrapped around the crown.

  She asked the children what they would like to wear. Annabel said could she wear the drifty chiffon she had bought for America: “I don’t want to look dreary for Daddy.” Tilly chose a simple cream linen shift, and Toby said he’d wear his Eton uniform. “Dad was so proud of me being there,” he said. “I think he’d have liked that.”

  “I think so too.”

  It might look a little odd, she thought, but what did it matter?

  The night before the funeral, she fell asleep in the garden; it was a beautiful night, the country was still going through one of its rare heat waves, the air heavy and scented. She felt restless and anxious, knew she wouldn’t sleep; Annabel was out with Florian, who she said had been fantastic—“He wants to come to the funeral, is that all right?”—and she had shared a rather silent supper with Toby and Tilly who were now struggling to distract themselves by watching a week’s recording of Neighbours. Simon had often said that the programme wielded enormous force for the good. “It’s all that sitting down and discussing issues, as they call it. And they all wear cycling helmets. What more can you ask?”

  And so she sat in the garden, under the chestnut tree and looked up at the stars and thought about Simon, and hoped that she would do well enough for him next day; and as much as she was able to do, sent up a small prayer to the Being beyond the stars, who she didn’t really believe in, that all would go well…

  In there is my husband, Elizabeth thought, looking at the coffin in church, lying silent and still, as he never was in life, lost to me now, locked away from me in there. There were two bouquets on Simon’s coffin; one of red roses, one of white. The red was from her, and said simply “Simon, from Elizabeth with all my love” and the white from the children, saying more poignantly still, “Daddy, with our love.” She sat staring at it, trying to feel something and couldn’t. It frightened her;
she should be sobbing, inconsolable, instead of sitting here, cool and calm with her children; and worried that people would be noticing, would be thinking she was unfeeling.

  The church began to fill up: friends, relatives, business associates. There was a large contingent from Graburn and French, including Martin Dudley the chairman; that was brave of him, Elizabeth thought, and then realised the true reason: Simon had been so popular, the outrage at his firing so great, that Dudley would have had a full-scale rebellion on his hands had he not been there. Sarah, Simon’s chilly and devoted secretary, was there, very red-eyed.

  Almost everyone from the agency had come. Peter Hargreaves sat in the pew behind her, with his wife; had greeted her with a kiss and then to her great surprise, sank onto his knees in prayer. She would never have thought of him as religious; looking round, she realised that many other people were doing the same thing. She wished she could find the comfort in prayer and God and the vision of everlasting life that the vicar had so clearly imagined she would.

  The new friends were all there, the Lloyd’s friends as she thought of them, including a rather cool-looking girl with brown straight hair, wearing no makeup, sitting next to George Meyer. Could she be the sexy lawyer, who she had been worried about? Hardly Simon’s type.

  And there was Florian, dear Florian, dressed in a dark suit, his wild curls neatly tamed, and a few other people from the salon. Florian had been a tower of strength to Annabel, and who would have thought that? More than anything this week, she had learned how unpredictable people were.

  Neil Lawrence was there, glassy pale, and Flora, of course, in a black flowing skirt and lace-up boots, but rather surprisingly a wonderful aqua-coloured embroidered silk jacket. She was sitting with Richard and Debbie—who was looking particularly dreadful, white and drawn—and their two older children.

  There were two other children, she couldn’t think who at first and then realised they were Catherine’s. Catherine who looked terribly pale, biting her lip. And the lovely Lucinda, quite pregnant now, very sober and still, and beside her—what was his name? oh yes, Blue—looking very fierce, scowling into the aisle. And there was that nice, rather attractive journalist, Joel something or other and…who was that tall, thin man, walking rather nervously down the aisle, trying to find a seat in the now-packed church? Lucinda half rose to greet him, while looking nervously at Blue, but then she saw Catherine smile at him and move her children up and create an empty seat beside her.