Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

  a. Candida’s final year at Cambridge was marred by poor health, which left her particularly ill-equipped for the transition to post-graduate life.

  b. She worked briefly as a cleaner for various friends before pursuing her theatrical ambitions. Faced with the closed shop of Equity entrance, she found that the one way in was by exotic dancing. In the course of this, she met Roger Forbes-Martin who was researching his study of Soho. On learning that she had befriended many of his subjects, he asked her to take the photographs; it was their success that launched her internationally renowned career.

  10. As to paragraph 9 of the Applicants’ Affidavit, far from being an indication of immorality, an address in Soho was almost a guarantee of respectability. The ‘working girls’ all made the journey from North and South London every day.

  11. As to paragraph 10 of the Applicants’ Affidavit, I utterly refute the suggestion that I was living off Candida in Soho and outline my own post-Cambridge career as follows:–

  a. After teaching for fifteen months at St Bride’s Preparatory School in Market Drayton, I moved to London. While trying to break into broadcasting, I earned my living by offering singing lessons.

  b. Through Roger Forbes-Martin, I met Rodger Standing, then the producer of Radio Four’s This Morning show, who heard some of my old Cambridge revue songs and asked me to contribute to the programme. This led to numerous radio appearances, including a regular spot on Light Waves. From there, I moved to television to present the Arts magazine, Addendum. Since then, I have worked continuously for the BBC; in the last seven years, as host of my own twice-weekly chat show.

  c. For the past nine years, I have written a fortnightly column for the Criterion.

  12. With reference to the Affidavit of Jennifer Knatchpole, sworn on the 20th day of November 1992, I have little comment to make, save that I have never been on friendly terms with the deponent and her Affidavit reflects this. I should add that:–

  a. Candida Mulliner had a passionate affair with the deponent’s husband immediately prior to their engagement. The deponent has always blamed her for the souring of her marriage.

  b. Candida’s announcement that she had herpes was an act of revenge on Guy Knatchpole for proposing that, despite his engagement, they should continue the affair; it had no basis in fact.

  c. The deponent clearly considers that my intimacy with Candida makes me guilty by association.

  13. With reference to the Affidavit of Lewis Kelly, sworn on the 24th day of November 1992, I would like to state that I have never enjoyed a good relationship with the deponent. I met him and, to my lasting regret, introduced him to Candida Mulliner in Wormwood Scrubs, where he was serving a life-sentence for murder. He was involved in a drama project which we were featuring on Light Waves. Candida subsequently visited him in prison and lived with him on his release. His violent and abusive behaviour was such that she soon left him.

  a. As to paragraph 3 of the deponent’s Affidavit, if this is true, how does he explain his agent’s repeated requests that he appear on my show?

  b. As to paragraph 5 of the deponent’s Affidavit, far from there being any possibility that Pagan is his daughter, after one particularly violent incident, Candida chose to have an abortion rather than to bear his child.

  14. I turn to the Applicants’ allegations of my homosexuality, which appear to constitute the sole reason for their return to this Court. I would state as follows:-

  a. I deny any suggestion that I am homosexual. Over the past twenty years, I have had several well-documented affairs with women.

  b. Candida Mulliner and I lived together at Cambridge and for most of the ensuing seventeen years. For an account of our relationship, I respectfully refer the Court to my Affidavit of the 25th day of March 1992.

  c. With reference to paragraph 6 of the Affidavit of Lewis Kelly, not only was there no homosexual scandal attached to my departure from St Bride’s, but my dismissal occurred when Candida and I were discovered in bed during her visit to the school … as a simple inquiry to the headmaster will confirm.

  d. With reference to paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Affidavit of Lewis Kelly, I fail to see what relation such insinuations have either to me or to this hearing.

  e. With reference to paragraph 9 of the Affidavit of Lewis Kelly, I would state that the deponent was always jealous of my intimacy with Candida. His very limited concept of friendship was threatened by our relationship. For all his subsequent success, his prison prejudices have remained intact.

  f. With reference to paragraph 6 of the Affidavit of Jennifer Knatchpole, I was under the misapprehension that the party was to be in fancy dress.

  g. With reference to paragraph 7 of the Affidavit of Jennifer Knatchpole, I repeat my paragraph 14b.

  15. I maintain that the Applicants have produced no substantive evidence to suggest that Pagan Mulliner should be removed from my care. I would ask the Court to confirm its Order of the 17th day of July 1992 and rule that the above-named minor should remain with me.

  Sworn by the above-named

  Leonard Peter Young,

  At 12 Field Court,

  Grays Inn,

  London WC1R 5EN.

  This 17th day of November 1992

  Before me,

  Arthur Ernest Duff.

  Solicitor/Commissioner for Oaths

  Third Affidavit of Leonard Peter Young

  on behalf of the Respondent

  Sworn the 12th day of January 1993

  In the Brighton County Court

  Case No. 7296

  In the matter of Pagan Mulliner

  And in the matter of the Children’s Act 1989

  Between

  Muriel Ellen Mulliner &

  Edgar Atkins Mulliner

  APPLICANTS

  and

  Leonard Peter Young

  RESPONDENT

  I, LEONARD PETER YOUNG, Writer and Broadcaster of 64 Addison Avenue, London W11, MAKE OATH and say as follows:–

  1. I am the respondent in this matter. I have read what purports to be a true copy of the third Affidavit of the Applicants sworn on the 22nd day of December 1992 and of the second Affidavit of Lewis Kelly sworn on the 18th day of December 1992 and of the exhibit thereto.

  2. I respectfully refer this Honourable Court to my Affidavit sworn on the 30th day of November 1992, to which I would like to add the following:–

  3. I accept that paragraph 2 of the Applicants’ Affidavit is true.

  4. I accept that paragraph 3a of the Applicants’ Affidavit is true.

  5. I utterly refute the allegations contained in paragraph 3b of the Applicants’ Affidavit and would say as follows:–

  a. The so-called ‘revelations’ in the Nation of 13th December 1992 are nearly a decade old. David Sunning was a researcher on the BBC Arts programme Addendum, with whom I enjoyed a brief relationship. His bitterness at my decision to end it has festered to this day.

  b. I have had no contact with David Sunning since January 1985 … eighteen months before Pagan was born. The relationship has had no bearing on my subsequent life nor on my ability to care for Pagan.

  c. I deny that I attempted to mislead the Court in my Affidavit sworn on the 20th day of November 1992 and would state that the relationship was of so little significance that it had slipped my mind.

  6. I turn now to the second Affidavit of Lewis Kelly and to Candida Mulliner’s letter to the deponent of 3rd July 1981, exhibit LK1, and would comment as follows:–

  7. With reference to paragraph 3 of the Affidavit, it is untrue that Candida Mulliner and I never slept together. While our primary relationship may not have been sexual, we were physically very intimate from the first afternoon that we met. The problem, as she put it, was that the ‘chemistry’ was wrong.

  8. With reference to paragraph 4 of the Affidavit, the insinuations are distasteful. In both cases, the deponent is deliberately misunderstanding information that he has half-heard from Candida Mulliner about mishaps in which I was loosely
involved.

  9. With reference to paragraph 5 of the Affidavit and to Candida Mulliner’s letter, exhibit LK1, I would state as follows:–

  a. Candida was writing to the deponent in Wormwood Scrubs where he still had two years to serve of a fourteen-year sentence for murder. She wanted to sustain him by planning their life together on his release. In order to assure him that she was unattached, she made out that her discovery in my bed at St Bride’s was a mere device to engineer my dismissal from the school.

  b. In view of the deponent’s history of violence, Candida claimed that our relationship was platonic in order to protect me.

  10. I would conclude by saying that, in the circles in which Candida Mulliner and I moved in the early 1980s, it was fashionable to dabble in bisexuality, and I do not deny that I followed the trend; I do, however, strenuously deny that it amounted to anything more. I have now been celibate for the past eight years. I would therefore ask the Court to confirm its Order that Pagan Mulliner remain with me.

  Sworn by the above-named

  Leonard Peter Young,

  At 12 Field Court,

  Grays Inn,

  London WC1R 5EN.

  This 12th day of January 1993

  Before me,

  Arthur Ernest Duff.

  Solicitor/Commissioner for Oaths

  Fourth Affidavit of Leonard Peter Young

  on behalf of the Respondent

  Sworn the 14th day of February 1993

  In the Brighton County Court

  Case No. 7296

  In the matter of Pagan Mulliner

  And in the matter of the Children’s Act 1989

  Between

  Muriel Ellen Mulliner &

  Edgar Atkins Mulliner

  APPLICANTS

  and

  Leonard Peter Young

  RESPONDENT

  I, LEONARD PETER YOUNG, Writer and Broadcaster of 64 Addison Avenue, London W11, MAKE OATH and say as follows:–

  1. I am the respondent in this matter. I make this Affidavit further to my previous Affidavit in these proceedings of the 12th day of January 1993.

  2. Increasing speculation about my sexuality in certain sections of the press has culminated in the front-page article in the Nation today, the 14th of February 1993. While I regard such intrusions into my privacy as beneath contempt, I consider it necessary to comment on a matter which may be felt to bear on these proceedings.

  3. The burden of the afore-mentioned article, that I have intermittently used the Streetwise escort agency, is correct. The transactions were anonymous, brief and clinical; I have not allowed them to impinge on any other aspect of my life, least of all my guardianship of Pagan.

  4. The reference to eight years of celibacy in paragraph 10 of my Affidavit of the 12th day of January 1993 was primarily metaphorical.

  5. No prostitute has visited my house at any time, let alone when Pagan was present.

  6. I very much regret that this matter has been raised. With the large number of adult influences available to Pagan, I feel sure that my sexuality will have no injurious effect on her development. Research has shown that the children of homosexual parents are no more likely to grow up homosexual than those of heterosexuals. Far from my causing her harm, I believe that my awareness of my own nature makes me more sensitive to hers.

  7. I have profound doubts about the Applicants’ ability to care for Pagan, based both on the evidence of the past few months and on Candida Mulliner’s account of her childhood. I am convinced that the Applicants have no genuine fears for Pagan’s well-being but rather that they desire to sever all contact between us; to which end, they are prepared to countenance any calumny.

  8. It is clear that the Nation’s report constitutes a deliberate attempt to blacken my character and to bring outside influence to bear on the decisions of this Court. I trust that such tactics will fail and that the Court will confirm its earlier Order that Pagan Mulliner should remain with me.

  Sworn this 14th day of February 1993

  at The Grand Hotel, King’s Road, Brighton

  In the County of Sussex

  Before me,

  Neil Morley-Macmillan.

  A Solicitor empowered to administer oaths

  1

  Do you mind if I give Pagan a guardian angel? I am afraid that you may regard it as another betrayal. But, as Raisa’s and Gorby’s fate has shown, teddy bears are no longer enough. She needs something that she can keep on her shoulder not on her pillow, something that she can call on – something that she can cling to – when I am not at hand. What is the alternative? A Fairy Godmother of Christmas Tree tweeness, who will go up in smoke at the pantomime? She is hardly in line for a patron saint.

  She needs one for her visits to Hove, which do not become any easier. Her baleful eyes remind me of Texas when I used to drive him to kennels, and she is equally hard to convince of my good faith. She demands to stop every few miles to pee or to vomit. Last weekend, I gave her two Kwells before we set off; and, ever since, I have had a sickening sense of myself as a white slaver. If only I had insisted on your parents fetching her and my bringing her home … at least I would be less implicated in her pain.

  She tells me very little about the weekend routine; it is as though any detail will detract from the general horror. Her constant complaint is of boredom. They make such a to-do about having her and then give her nothing to do once she is there. Even the television is permanently tuned to your father’s weekend sport. ‘It’s not fair,’ she grumbles, ‘in the day-time programmes should be for children and in the night-time for grown-ups.’

  I remonstrate with your mother, who replies that, when she was her age, young girls were able to entertain themselves (‘they didn’t always need to be doing’) and adds that, far from neglecting her, she is teaching her to cook and your father teaching her to swim. But the pleasures of rolling pastry are lost in a world of bake but don’t touch, and her poolside euphoria deflates as fast as the water-wings which your father refuses to let her wear.

  ‘I don’t like it. He says there’s nothing scary, cos he’s holding me tight. But, even when he’s holding me tight, I don’t like it. When he’s holding me tight, I don’t like it more. And his body’s soggy. And he holds me too tight. And I slip and drink all the water. And I tell him what you said about naughty boys doing pee in it. “Not in Brighton,” he said; “only in London.” But I say phooey.’

  I say far more, as they bring her home and accuse me of filling her head with nonsense. They produce a list of complaints, as if they are co-parents. I stand firm.

  ‘At school we used to call it urinated water.’

  ‘I take it then you went to a state school?’

  ‘That’s it; there’s no more to be said.’

  ‘You said it, sir, not me.’

  It seems to me that I have far more cause for complaint. I am tucking up Pagan in bed when she asks me what dying is like.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Like going to sleep on the bounciest mattress, your head full of the sweetest dreams. But I can’t say for sure, since no one has ever come back to tell the tale.’

  ‘What about Lazarus?’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘Who’s she? The cat’s mother?’

  ‘Why do you call her that? She hates cats.’ She shouts for Trouble. ‘Do you think Mummy may come back too?’

  ‘I don’t think so, darling. That’s just a story which happened a very long time ago. Besides, Mummy’s never really gone away: not when we talk about her and think about her and write our book.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘No, I know. But it’s the next best thing. And sometimes that’s all we can have.’

  The next day we are walking down Kensington High Street when she is sure that she sees you. ‘Mummy,’ she shouts and runs into Barkers Arcade. She hurls herself at several shoppers. ‘You’re not
my mummy, you’re not,’ she shrieks and stands lost in confusion and tears. As I reach her, I am met with looks first of mistrust and then of recognition. One woman holds out a tissue and a pen in the same hand. I decline both and seek sanctuary in St Mary Abbots, where a secluded pew gives Pagan a chance to recover. She insists that she saw you. I explain that it is a trick of her mind which, for a moment, has forgotten that you are dead. But even as I speak to her – and even more as I speak to you – I betray myself. Who is to say that you are not as real to her as you are to me? I see you; I hear you; I feel you; I just cannot touch you. Since when has touch been the test of truth?

  I offer her words not of comfort but of convention; and yet perhaps that is for the best. Do we want her to grow up with second sight or sixth sense? That may suit a twin or a genius, but, for the rest of us, the price is too high. We have to survive in the workaday world, which is run by politicians not poets. So I shall never again say that a dream is more real to me than waking, or a dead friend than the living, but simply that it – that you – are more vivid. She is too young to believe in ghosts.

  I wipe her eyes and cloud her vision. ‘No, you didn’t see Mummy, darling. You saw someone whom you thought looked like her, that’s all.’

  ‘I can’t see what she looks like. I’m scared.’ She sobs.

  ‘I’ll take you home and we’ll go through the photographs.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘I know.’

  On our next trip to Hove, I ask your mother to avoid any mention of death or religion, as it only confuses her. ‘I see,’ she says. ‘Now you have the right to censor our conversation. I must have missed that in the judgement.’

  ‘It’s for her sake,’ I say, ‘not mine.’

  The following week, Pagan is even more taciturn, finally revealing that your parents accused her of betraying them and made her promise never again to repeat anything that happened there. I insist that there are some promises that she is allowed to break and that she must never keep anything from me or else the secrets will grow between us like the thorns that surrounded Sleeping Beauty’s palace. Then I call her my Sleeping Beauty and blow on her eyes.