AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Fleur! Yes, Fleur, and Chloe and the boys, and that ever so aristocratic, broken reed of a husband of yours –’

  ‘Don’t say that about William. How dare you!’

  ‘I dare, because I’m sorry for him. For all of them. I see what you do to them. Exactly what you do to me. Give them some rationed aspect of your time and attention, and all the time holding yourself back. You don’t ever give, Caroline, not properly. Only with a very careful eye on your life and your commitments and the clock.’

  ‘Joe, this is just not fair.’

  ‘It’s perfectly fair. Everybody around you gets short-changed. No wonder Fleur feels the way she does about you. I would too.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Caroline went over to him and hit him hard across the face. ‘How could you say that, how could you! You don’t understand me or any of it. I never, ever want to have anything to do with you again.’

  Tears of grief and rage had begun to flow down her face; Joe looked at her and his expression softened suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, Caroline, that was totally out of order. I shouldn’t have said that. I just wanted to hurt you. Look, sit down and I’ll get you a drink –’

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ she said, ‘and anyway it’s time we left. We have’ – she looked at her watch – ‘precisely seven minutes before the taxi comes.’

  ‘Seven minutes!’ he said, angry again. ‘Seven minutes. How precise. Yes, well, you can’t do much in seven minutes, can you, Lady Hunterton? Not without getting seriously behind schedule.’

  He turned away from her again. Caroline brushed her tears irritably away, and then suddenly looked at him, seeing him as if for the first time, and thought she had never, in her whole life, not even on Brendan, seen such a sexy back: it was not just the narrow hips, the surprisingly rounded, almost girlish bottom, the long, rangy legs, it was the slight stoop of his shoulders, the oddly vulnerable bend of his neck, the way his shaggy fair hair fell thickly on to his collar. Contemplating it, and her own desire, newly heated by raw emotion and rage, she suddenly knew what she had to do, that if she did not she would regret it for the rest of her life, and that even if she was rejected, she would deem it better than walking out on him now. She took a deep breath, stepped forward and put her arms tightly round his waist, rubbing her head gently against his back, moving one hand down over his stomach, reaching, searching, finding the rising hardening penis.

  ‘I think actually we could do quite a lot in seven minutes,’ she said.

  She came in little more than seconds, so charged was she with frustration and longing and delight at him. He pulled her down on to the bed, pushed up her skirt, tearing at her pants; Caroline, shivering violently, found his fly, unzipped it, thrust herself upwards, upwards, and as he entered her, as she received him into her hungry, empty, aching self, as she closed around him, in a great tumbling shower of pleasure, she shrieked aloud, and moved, just twice, and then it was there, she had found it, a white-hot, tender violence, and she clung to him, kissing him frantically, crying at the same time, and she heard his voice, felt his hands on her, and then felt him coming too, deeply, rhythmically, endlessly into her; then she tipped back her head and smiled at him, smiled into his extraordinary green eyes, and said, ‘Perhaps we should join the mile-high club.’

  ‘Perhaps we should,’ said Joe, and she saw that he was crying.

  Her phone rang just as she was leaving the room, tearing round desperately, checking things, trying to tidy her hair, to change her clothes, all at the same time.

  It was Fleur. ‘I just rang to tell you goodbye,’ she said, ‘and to say that I plan on going to California as soon as I can. To visit Miss duGrath and see if I can find out some more about why my father died.’

  ‘Why? Suddenly?’ Caroline was playing for time.

  ‘I always intended to. But I couldn’t before. Not while Grandma was alive. She wouldn’t have let me. I have to go. I have to know what happened.’

  ‘Fleur –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fleur, I don’t know that it would do any good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well – maybe it isn’t a very nice story.’

  ‘You know what happened, don’t you?’ said Fleur, her voice icy, detached suddenly, the rift between them widening hideously again. ‘Why can’t you tell me?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. Not really,’ said Caroline firmly, glad this conversation was taking place on the telephone. ‘I don’t think any of us do.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Fleur, listen. I have to go. I have a plane to catch. I’ll write to you. Tell you what I know. I promise. All right?’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother. I’ll find out by myself, go alone.’

  ‘Fleur, you can’t. You couldn’t cope. Not by yourself.’

  ‘Caroline,’ said the voice, half amused, half hostile, ‘I’m used to coping by myself.’

  Newspaper clippings, background to the Lost Years section of The Tinsel Underneath.

  From the Los Angeles Times, 19 August 1957

  The body of a young girl was found washed up on the beach at Santa Monica early this morning. The autopsy revealed that she was four months pregnant. So far no one has come forward to claim kinship with her. Foul play is not suspected.

  From the Los Angeles Times, 4 September 1957

  The inquest on the young woman who was found dead on the beach at Santa Monica on 19 August was held today. She has been identified as Kirstie Fairfax, an actress. She had not worked for some time, it was stated, and was very depressed. Michelle Zwirn, a neighbour and close friend of Miss Fairfax, said that she had been led to believe she could have a part in a new film being cast at ACI, starring Byron Patrick, but had heard on the day of her death that she had not got it. She said she had had no idea that Miss Fairfax had been pregnant. Miss Zwirn appeared very distraught at the inquest; later it was revealed that her brother, Gerard, has sustained terrible injuries in a recent accident, and is unlikely ever to walk again.

  The verdict on Miss Fairfax was of suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed.

  1961–2

  Chloe wasn’t at all sure now about the silver dress. Her brothers had fallen about, clutching each other and hooting with laughter when they had found her trying it on, telling her she looked like a Christmas parcel, ‘a jolly lumpy one,’ added Jolyon. ‘Don’t suppose you could get a long enough bit of string to go round you,’ said Toby, and Nanny had said, having come down the corridor to see what the noise was about, that it was very pretty, and it was nice to see a dress that had been made at home for a change, which had worried Chloe in case the dress was so obviously home-made that everyone would know and despise her for it. Her father had told her she looked lovely, but then he would have said that if she had been dressed up in one of the sacks Jack used to store the horses’ feed. So here she was, looking at herself worriedly and wondering what else she could wear, and indeed if she ought to go to the ball at all. Not for the first, or even the hundred and first, time in her life did she think wistfully of having the kind of mother who was so interested, so concerned that her daughter should look right at parties, she would spend days helping her find exactly the perfect dress. Lots of the girls at school had mothers like that: they would tell of days shopping, lunching, gossiping, giggling with their mothers – not in her wildest dreams could Chloe imagine giggling with her mother – of dress rehearsals in bedrooms, of harmless deceptions perpetrated upon the fathers who were paying for the dresses, of mothers waiting up until they got home, dying to hear every detail of the party or the dance. The very most Chloe ever got from Caroline was a ‘Very nice, darling’, as she went in to say goodbye, and then she always had to ask her if she looked all right, the information was never volunteered.

  Oh well, at least she wouldn’t lose anything by her mother being in New Yor
k. Chloe told herself she was silly even to think about not going to the dance, that the dress was perfectly all right really, she was just being silly, and went into her mother’s room to try on some shoes.

  The ones in the wardrobe were useless: too high-heeled, as Caroline had said. It wasn’t just that they were too sophisticated for her, she could hardly walk in them, let alone dance. She looked round the room. Her mother was orderly; she had a rack of shoes in another cupboard, ranged in colours; they were more low-heeled certainly, but a bit old-fashioned. Still, they would probably do; the black suede ones were quite pretty, and fitted her. She swirled this way and that in the dress, her courage and confidence growing, managing to field a small ornament on her mother’s bedside table that her dress had knocked flying. Yes, they would be all right. Not perfect but all right.

  And then she saw a big box just sticking out by a corner under the bed. Mrs Jarvis had been spring-cleaning in her mother’s absence and hadn’t put anything back quite right. The pictures had been put back on all the wrong walls, and the collection of Battersea boxes on the dressing-table were all higgledy-piggledy. Caroline would be cross about it when she came home; she liked everything to be absolutely perfect. Well, never mind. That was not Chloe’s problem. But the box might just have shoes in it. Caroline never threw things away. She pulled it out.

  No, not shoes, just a lot of old photographs. Oh, but what photographs! Chloe settled down happily and started leafing through them. Her mother as a child, sitting straight and brave on a lively-looking little pony, with a very young-looking Jack Bamforth holding on to the reins. A formal study of Caroline and her parents, Jacqueline looking a little stern but ravishingly beautiful, and Stanley beaming roguishly down at his little daughter. Caroline jumping at a gymkhana. Caroline sitting on a rather big black horse at a meet at the Moat House with Stanley beside her on a huge grey and Jacqueline, looking gorgeous, holding a tray with glasses on it, smiling up at the Master. Caroline blowing out the candles on her birthday cake when she was about eight or nine, surrounded by her friends. And then some school photographs, standard groups, and a few of games teams, Caroline captaining some of them, much less interesting. Chloe was about to push the box back under the bed when she noticed that under the photographs was a brown paper bag and under the brown paper bag there were some magazines.

  Intrigued – for she liked magazines – she pulled them out. They were old, yellowing copies of something called Picture-goer; she smiled as she recognized her idol, Rock Hudson, looking dashingly boyish on the cover of one, and started flipping through it. It hardly seemed the sort of magazine her mother would keep or even read; one of the pages was a bit blotchy as if it had been wet. It was a gossipy page, covered in small pictures of film stars in Hollywood, out at parties, playing tennis or posing on the beach; there was one picture slightly bigger than all the others of a very good-looking man, a bit like Tony Curtis, holding out a big beach ball to a very pretty girl: Byron Patrick, said the caption, new heart-throb in Hollywood. Well, she’d never heard of him. Whoever he was, he hadn’t made it. She got out the rest; this was fun. She didn’t see anything familiar in the next one, not even Cary Grant, but in the third, on a page entitled Hollywood Round-Up, there was quite a big picture of the same man, Byron Patrick, all dressed up like Ali Baba, with a knife between his teeth. Underneath that were two copies of the magazine folded open at pages with pictures of Byron Patrick.

  Chloe was amused and slightly puzzled; obviously her mother had had a bit of a thing about Mr Patrick. But if she had, why on earth should she keep the magazines with pictures of him hidden under her bed, under a whole lot of school photographs? Oh, well, they probably reminded her of her youth.

  She flipped through all the magazines again, all five of them; the common link was, without doubt, Byron Patrick. He was in every single one. Tucked inside the very last one was a big shiny print of him, just head and shoulders, smiling into the camera, smoking a cigarette, with what was obviously supposed to be a real signature, but actually printed on, in that funny scrawly American writing, in the corner. Her mother must have sent for it: how funny. For the very first time in her life Chloe felt mildly superior to her.

  Underneath the magazines there were the letters. In a biggish brown envelope. She looked inside, saw them and tried to make herself put the whole lot back. She was an honourable child and a truthful one, and not given to poking and prying into other people’s things. But her curiosity had been aroused by Mr Patrick, and this new, strange side to her mother, a reader of film magazines and a fan of young Hollywood actors; the letters might explain a little more. And if, she thought, with a rare flash of irritation and self-pity, her mother had been there with her, buying her some new shoes instead of forcing her to rummage through her bedroom in search of her old ones, she would not have been in this odd, tempting situation. Looking around her cautiously, as if she might be observed, Chloe pulled the letters out of the envelope.

  There were only three: innocent ordinary-looking letters, just words on paper. It seemed incredible to Chloe that they could have the power to do her such harm, hurt her so badly.

  The first was from a Mrs Jackson from an adoption agency, in Ipswich, dated 6 May 1945.

  Dear Lady Hunterton,

  I would be very grateful if you could see your way to signing the adoption papers for your daughter. Her adoptive parents are naturally anxious to have the matter settled. Perhaps you would call into my office one day shortly and attend to it.

  May I congratulate you on your recent marriage.

  Yours sincerely,

  Irene Jackson

  The second was also from Mrs Jackson and it was angry, almost vituperative.

  Dear Lady Hunterton,

  I would urge you very strongly not to go ahead with your dangerously ill-considered decision to place your daughter in her father’s care. I do assure you that if you feel she will be happier with her natural father, this is a misapprehension. No doubt you feel that, as the child’s mother, you know what is best for her. I regret to have to inform you that you do not. Not only will you be causing great distress to her prospective adoptive parents, which may be of little interest or concern to you, but also to the child herself, who will find herself with total strangers. I would have thought that the maternal bond of which you speak so eloquently might have been expected to give you a little more insight into the needs of your own child.

  If, however, you are determined to go ahead, please ask your solicitor to contact me immediately.

  Yours sincerely,

  Irene Jackson

  The last letter, which was rather crinkly and splotchy, was on airmail paper. There was no address.

  My darling, darling Caroline,

  I know we agreed that you should never know where I live and where Fleur is living also, and I am not breaking that pledge. I also know we agreed I should never contact you again.

  Nevertheless, I wished you to know two things.

  One is that Fleur is happy, settled and good; she is bright and beautiful, and my mother adores her. So do her aunts. She is saying a few words (in a good, strong American accent), and scuttling around fast on her skinny little knees. She eats and sleeps in an exemplary manner and plays a great deal with sundry pieces of paper, string, and other contents of the waste-bins, ignoring the expensive toys I have bought her in a most determined way. Everyone says (of course) that she looks like me, but when I see her looking at me, in an oddly intent concerned way, or she throws back her head and laughs, and when she falls asleep in my arms, with her small head settled in the crook of my elbow, I know I am with you, or at least a small part of you, again.

  The second thing is that I love you and I always will. And I can only contemplate the knowledge that I shall never see you again, and find the strength to live with that knowledge, when I am close to and loving and caring for Fleur.

 
; We both send you our best, our dearest, our most tender love.

  Brendan

  Chloe sat for a long time in her mother’s room. She did not notice that it was dark, she did not hear Nanny calling her, she did not hear the boys fighting and yelling on the stairs. She simply sat (having put the letters and the magazines and the photographs back), as if turned to stone, looking into nothingness, and wondering if the strange pain in her heart would ever go away again.

  She wasn’t even sure what she felt: confused, yes, shocked, yes, but beyond that – what? How much did she mind? That she had a sister, a sister little more than a year older than herself? That her mother had been in love with, borne a child to another man, not Chloe’s own kind, gentle father, a child she had never mentioned. How had it happened, how could her mother have done such a thing, and how was she ever going to be able to face her mother, be even polite to her again? And did it explain her mother’s near indifference towards her, that sometimes seemed almost dislike, and did this person, Fleur, was she the recipient of all the maternal love, the tenderness, the interest, that Chloe had never known? All these things she probed, cautiously, carefully, as if exploring the extent of a wound, an aching tooth; and she could not begin to find any answers.

  She went to the dance, surprising herself with what a good time she had; came home, slept for a few hours; and then woke up very early with a horrible headache and a raw feeling all over. She got up and dressed, and went down to the kitchen; Fortnum and Mason, the yellow labradors, and their mother Fenwick gave their usual impression of dogs who had not seen any human being of any kind in the last ten years, and followed her outside. It was raining, but Chloe didn’t care; she walked a long way, over the fields, and round the lanes, and as she got back near the house, she saw Jack Bamforth’s old Standard Vanguard pulling in to the stables. Chloe liked Jack, he always seemed to understand that she didn’t like riding and moreover didn’t behave as if it was a rather serious personality defect she suffered from; he waved to her now and walked towards her.