Parsons, Miss MacNeice’s driver, thought the same. But we both liked Mr FitzPatrick. His trouble was, you know, he was too honest. And he trusted people. You can’t trust people in this town.
That’s what killed him in the end. Trusting people.
I’m sorry I haven’t been more help.
1965
‘Chloe, I love you. Will you marry me?’
Joe Payton licked his fingers carefully one by one and looked across the kitchen table at her. ‘I cannot allow any woman who can make a chocolate mousse like this one to get away from me. Be mine, and I’ll keep you in squalor for the rest of your life.’
Chloe giggled. ‘All right. I accept. Will you tell Mummy, or shall I?’
‘Oh, you can. Definitely.’
‘Fine. Here, give me that bowl back, there’s still much too much in there to waste.’
‘It’s not wasted if it’s going into me.’
‘It can go into you later. Now look, you’ve got chocolate all over your sleeve.’
‘Oh, my God. And I was looking so immaculate.’
He rubbed the mousse rather half-heartedly with his handkerchief; it spread it slightly more evenly on to the shirt sleeve, but had no other effect at all. As the sleeve already had a hole in it at the elbow, and the collar was frayed almost into nothingness, the general effect was not markedly worse.
He sighed. ‘It says here’ – he indicated the Daily Mail which he was reading in between licking Chloe’s various cooking utensils – ‘that David Frost always looks svelte. I’d love to look svelte, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think either of us are very likely to,’ said Chloe.
‘Oh, I don’t know. When you went off to London the other day in that white coat thingy and those white boots, I thought you looked wonderfully svelte.’
‘Thank you, Joe. But I didn’t tell you what happened: I spilt my British Rail coffee on the coat and when I got to London I had to hotfoot it to Fenwicks and get something else to wear.’
‘Well, never mind. At least you started out looking svelte. I never even begin. And you’ve got your honours degree, haven’t you? I haven’t got anything like that.’
‘Yes, I’ve got my degree.’ She smiled at him; it was one of the many jokes they shared, she and Joe, which annoyed Caroline and which they knew annoyed her, about her honours degree in cookery, in actual fact her diploma from Winkfield Place.
‘Now look, my darling,’ said Joe, standing up, ‘I have to go up to town now; your mother said she’d be back from her ride before now, but she isn’t as we can both plainly see, so can you tell her I’ve gone and I don’t know when on earth I’ll be back. It’s all down to when this preview ends, and whether the divine Miss Christie is there or not. Now you’d better not present that piece of information quite like that to your mother, she might get the wrong idea.’
‘All right. See you later.’
‘Bye, darling.’
‘Bye, Joe. Oh, Joe –’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Don’t you think you might stand more of a chance with Miss Christie in a clean shirt?’
‘Maybe. Yes, OK. I’ll take one with me and change on the train. I’m awfully late.’
‘All right.’
Chloe looked tenderly at his departing E Type, screeching out of the gates. She adored Joe.
Just over a year after her father died he had moved into the Moat House ‘on a part-time basis’ as he put it; he still kept his shabby flat in Primrose Hill, since he could never, he explained to Chloe, become a country lover. She had not felt in the least that her father had been set aside for someone else, but simply that there was another person in the family, a successor of sorts, who he would have found it easy to like and accept himself.
The arrival of Joe in her life had eased her relationship with her mother too; they had talked quite a lot about Caroline’s past, about her relationship with Fleur’s father, although hardly at all about Fleur, that really was too painful, and Joe had managed to explain how it might have happened, and to soothe her hurt – to a degree. They were polite to each other, these days, she and Caroline, kissed each other at Christmas and on birthdays, and tried to be considerate of one another, but that was the full extent of their relationship. Certainly, she did not feel her mother loved her. Joe was right about an awful lot of things, but not that. Caroline tolerated her, Chloe felt, appreciated her good nature and her helpfulness, was grateful that she liked Joe, and didn’t give her any trouble, and that was about the full extent of her emotions towards her. Chloe felt more or less normal about life again, except when she thought about Fleur; and most of the time she fought off such thoughts by sheer willpower. But when the willpower failed, she was consumed with a white, blistering heat of jealousy. She supposed this was what it must be like to feel jealousy over some man. Only it couldn’t be worse. This was agony.
She knew Joe had met Fleur, indeed he had tried to tell her she would like Fleur; but she had politely but very firmly shut him up on the subject.
‘I don’t want to hear anything about her, Joe, good or bad. I’d rather just think she wasn’t there at all. If you don’t mind.’
And Joe had shrugged and given her his sweetest smile, and said he didn’t mind at all, but if she changed her mind, he was around. Chloe told him she wouldn’t change her mind. She simply closed her mind to her, in a way that was half fierce, half frightened. She was sure that Fleur was amusing, confident, pretty and thin, that she didn’t knock things over, and that Caroline and she had long, easy, close conversations with one another; just the knowledge that she was there, on the other side of the world, was a permanent, almost physical pain in her life; but she had to live with it, it wasn’t going to go away, and it was like being overweight and clumsy, something she had to endure and to try to cope with.
She had once, after a solitary dinner and two glasses of wine with Joe, when Caroline had been taking the boys somewhere, said as much to him; he had looked at her in astonishment and instead of talking about Fleur, had said yes, sure she was clumsy, it was one of the most endearing things about her, but she wasn’t overweight, surely she knew that, she was a knockout these days, and the sooner she realized that the better.
Chloe had gone upstairs after that, and studied herself in the mirror, seeing herself clearly for the first time for years, and she could see to her great amazement that he was right: well, perhaps not knockout, but she had lost a lot of weight, and although she wasn’t sliver thin, for she had her grandfather’s slightly heavy build, there was no fat on her body at all, she was slender, and looked much taller too; her face had taken shape, she had cheekbones there all of a sudden, and an extremely pretty curving jaw, and her brown eyes looked larger and her mouth wider and more expressive. Her hair was a bit wild; it was a nice colour, that dark red, but maybe she should get a decent haircut? A bob maybe? Her legs had lost weight too, got more shapely; they weren’t her mother’s legs, thoroughbred legs, Jack had called them once, but they weren’t bad, and she could probably get away with the new short skirts now. Chloe stood there for a long time, hitching up her pink tweed skirt, turning from left to right, sucking in her cheekbones, pouting into the mirror the way models did into the camera, and felt a wild, heady excitement. She was pretty! It was true. Actually pretty! And more than pretty, she was almost thin. It was amazing. Astonishing! Why hadn’t she realized? Why had it taken Joe Payton to point it out to her?
And then she thought that once again, if her mother had had more time, more attention to spare for her, she might have known; if she had said, come on, you look really good (or even you could look really good), let’s go and buy you some nice clothes, you deserve them, and it’ll be fun, we’ll have a nice day; but she hadn’t. She seemed to give no more thought to Chloe than to the paper on the drawing-room wall, something that was there, to be glanced at occas
ionally, and checked for signs of wear and tear, and a great deal less than she did to her horse. Not to mention the boys. And probably to her. Her, over there in America. Had her mother taken her shopping, pronounced on what suited her, insisted on getting her this dress, that sweater, make her have her hair cut, or helped her with her make-up? Laughing, chatting, joking with her?
Chloe had switched her thoughts from her with a great effort, went downstairs again to the kitchen, where Joe was engrossed in the Sunday Times, and kissed him on the top of his shaggy blond head.
‘You’re such a good friend to me,’ she said simply.
Joe blew his nose hard.
Chloe had got a job with Browne and Lowe, freelance caterers, shortly after she had left Winkfield. Jenny Brownlowe, who was both Browne and Lowe, had taken one look at her, at her smiling face, her neat clothes, her pretty manners, and had known she hardly had to look at Chloe’s diploma or the letters from her principal; within weeks Chloe had graduated from number three in the team, designated primarily to chopping vegetables and shopping, to number two, and within months to helping plan menus. Chloe’s clumsiness and shyness vanished in the kitchen; she became competent, calm, deft. She had a great feeling for food: she could tell what something was going to taste like before she had even finished reading a recipe; she could time the preparation of three very disparate dishes so that all of them were at the same stage at precisely the same moment, ready to pack up and drive off to their destination (or alternatively to pass over to waiters and waitresses to serve); she had a flair for presentation, using flowers and chopped vegetables and even grasses as adornments for plates and trays and baskets of food (Mrs Brownlowe had once said she thought Chloe would be able to make a plate of tripe look chic), and she was thoughtful and innovative with her combinations of vegetables and fruits, serving such unexpected combinations as aubergines with carrots, grapefruit with raspberries with great success.
Her personality suited Jenny Brownlowe as well; despite being one of the most successful small concerns in London, and having a vast list of clients for whom she did weddings, parties, shoots and debutante balls, as well as the inevitable lunches, she still became neurotically anxious about every single job. Chloe’s calm, and her ability to create it in the room where she worked, was invaluable to her.
After a year with Mrs Brownlowe, Chloe was happier than she would ever have believed: and she knew she looked lovely. She had lost still more weight, she had grown her red hair quite long (rather than cutting it short as she had planned at first) and wore it with a heavy fringe that emphasized her brown eyes; and she had learnt to dress. The clothes that filled the shops, Bazaar and the 21 Room at Woollands and of course magical, wonderful Biba in Kensington Church Street, little short shifts in fine wool and cotton and lacy crochet, suited her perfectly, as did the slightly exaggerated make-up all the girls wore with such aplomb: the long false eyelashes, the complex eye-shading, the dark blushers, the light, pearly lipstick. For the first time in her life, she liked looking in the mirror.
What Chloe dreamed about was to be the most important person in the world to someone, someone who loved her and cared for her and appreciated her, someone who had time for her, someone who thought she was worth listening to. A bit like Joe, she supposed; but Joe wasn’t her type. Much as she loved Joe, sexy as she could see he was, even, she didn’t personally find him attractive. Chloe liked men who were more formal-looking than Joe, and probably rather serious, really well dressed, sophisticated: and dark-haired. Her hero was Cary Grant.
She had never had a boyfriend; not a real one. Boys had danced with her, bought her drinks, asked her to make up parties for race meetings and tennis afternoons, kissed her almost dutifully when they were drunk, or taken her home, but not fancied her, tried to persuade her to go to bed with them. Chloe knew she wasn’t very sexy. Her mother was sexy, she could see that, and she could see which of her friends were sexy (and no doubt Fleur was sexy). But maybe love, when it came, would make her sexy, or maybe make it less important; certainly it would do something. It had to. She just hoped it was going to come soon.
After Joe had gone, she made herself another cup of coffee and contemplated the day ahead. She would not normally have been at the Moat House on a weekday; but she had worked the previous Sunday and Mrs Brownlowe had insisted she took the day off.
‘See if you can find that flat you’re always talking about.’
‘Oh – yes,’ said Chloe, trying to sound enthusiastic. Her flat-hunting was more than a little half-hearted; she didn’t actually like the idea of living alone, and of sharing with a load of other girls even less. When she had to stay in town, she used the tiny boxroom in Joe’s flat; it suited both of them. It had initially irritated Caroline, who was jealous of their friendship, but Joe had said he liked having her there, she was company, and she kept the place tidy, which was very nice for him.
Anyway, it was a lovely day, far too nice to go trailing round the endless streets of Earl’s Court and Kensington; she was cultivating a large and ambitious herb garden at the Moat House, the fruits of which she trailed up to work with her, to Mrs Brownlowe’s delight. She decided to work on that.
She stopped at lunch-time, achingly but happily tired, and sat down to a piece of toast and Marmite (her favoured diet at all meals, left to herself) when the phone rang. It was Joe.
‘Darling, I’ve done something seriously stupid. Locked myself out of the flat. Everything I need’s in there. Wallet, car keys, the lot. I can get by until after this bloody preview, but then I need to get in. I seem to remember, or maybe it was wishful thinking, you were coming up tonight?’
‘It was wishful thinking,’ said Chloe. ‘But I have an early start tomorrow. It would actually be better for me to be in town tonight. I’ll be your fairy godmother, Joe, don’t worry.’
‘Chloe, I love you. Listen, you can come and see this film if you like. As a reward, mingle with the mighty afterwards. How does that sound?’
‘Terrifying,’ said Chloe. ‘You’ll have to hold my hand all the time. OK, Joe, I’ll meet you there. What’s the address?’
‘Seventy-nine Wardour Street. Basement. Follow the noise of clinking glasses. I’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Now you’re not to be frightened,’ said Joe, ‘and I will hold your hand. Come on in.’
He had been waiting for her at the bottom of the slightly grubby flight of stairs down into the preview theatre. It was not at all what Chloe had expected: no famous faces, no flashbulbs, no champagne, just a lot of people talking loudly in a very small cinema. Joe found them two seats near the back, introduced her to the man next to her who was a journalist from the Daily Express and spent a lot of time trying to tuck his long legs under first his own seat and then the one in front.
‘For God’s sake, Payton, keep still,’ said a small smiling man in front of him. ‘You’ll be eating popcorn next.’
‘Sorry, Donald,’ said Joe apologetically. ‘Donald Zec,’ he said to Chloe. ‘From the Daily Mirror. Very important person. Aren’t you, Donald?’
‘Very. Who’s this gorgeous creature you’ve got with you? Thought you were a happily married man, near as dammit, Joe. You really are disgusting.’
‘This is my almost-stepdaughter,’ said Joe. ‘Chloe Hunterton.’
‘Stepdaughter!’ said Zec. ‘Go tell that one to the marines. You stay close to me, my dear. I’ll look after you. Why don’t you come and sit with me now? This man is as close to totally amoral as it’s possible to be. I can’t bear to see you in such danger.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Chloe, smiling at him, wriggling out of her coat. ‘He almost is my stepfather, and I can handle him.’
‘Good. This is going to be a terrible film, Joe. I’ve written the review already.’
‘Is she coming?’
‘I believe so. Complete with retinue.’
&nb
sp; ‘Does that mean Julie Christie?’ said Chloe.
‘No, darling, it means the star. But I’m more interested in one of the supporting cast. Big new hope for the cinema. Name of Tabitha Levine. She has a small but meaningful part. Everyone’s watching her.’
‘Oh,’ said Chloe humbly and settled down to do the same.
Donald Zec was right and it was, if not a terrible movie, a mediocre one, a much hyped tragi-comedy in which Margaret Lamont, who played the lead, married a young man half her age who then left her for her daughter (Tabitha Levine’s part). At the end there was some half-hearted applause followed by a stampede for the bar. Joe led Chloe over.
‘Julie is managing to tear herself away from me tonight,’ he said. ‘I just got a message from her agent. I might try to have a word with Tabitha though. She’s over there now. Can you hang on?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Chloe.
She looked at Tabitha curiously; she was tall and immensely pale, with a lot of dark red hair, not unlike her own, except that Tabitha’s was riotously curly. She was wearing an elaborate embroidered Indian dress, several rings on each finger, a squaw band round her forehead, and small round spectacles with bright blue frames. She was smoking and fiddling with her hair, and looked bored and rather intense, quite incapable of putting in the kind of sparkling performance that had just been on the screen. She was surrounded by a large crowd of people all laughing uproariously at her every utterance.
‘Bit of a dog I’d say.’ It was Donald Zec. ‘Got everything you want, sweetie?’
‘Oh – yes, thank you,’ said Chloe. ‘I’m really enjoying myself. Is Margaret Lamont coming?’
‘Should be. They all drift in, casually, as if they hadn’t expected to find anyone here. Pathetic really. Look, there’s Sam Brixton, the director. And oh, yes, here comes Margaret now.’
Margaret Lamont bore more than a passing resemblance to Zsa Zsa Gabor; she came into the room smiling radiantly from behind a large pair of dark glasses, and held out her arms to Sam Brixton.
AN Outrageous Affair Page 29