‘Well,’ he said in the morning, as she woke to see him sitting on the bed, dressed in a rather wildly printed silk nightshirt, watching her as the sunlight streamed across the bed, ‘well, here you are then, an old woman of the world. How do you feel?’
‘Fine,’ said Chloe slightly untruthfully (for she was still sore, and the second time had been just the same, wonderful in the beginning, then quick and almost frightening).
‘I am going to organize some breakfast,’ he said, looking at her rather oddly, ‘and then we have to talk.’
‘All right,’ said Chloe. So this was it. She had been hopeless, absolutely hopeless and he was going to tell her that it was all over. Well at least she wasn’t a virgin any more. She hoped she wasn’t pregnant. Or perhaps she hoped she was. She lay back exploring the prospect, and drifted slightly uneasily back to sleep; he woke her with a kiss on her forehead.
‘Come along, sit up. We have work to do. Orange juice? Croissant?’
She nodded, although she knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow a thing. She took the glass of orange juice and sat very still, bracing herself for the awful, dismissing words.
‘Chloe, look at me.’
She turned her head, met his grey eyes; they were gentle, smiling.
‘What do you think is to become of us?’ he said.
‘Well – I don’t know,’ said Chloe. ‘Nothing, I suppose.’
‘Well that would be a waste,’ he said almost cheerfully. ‘Tell me, how do you see the rest of your life?’
‘Well, I told you,’ she said. ‘I want to get married to someone and have lots of children.’
‘So do I,’ he said.
There was a long silence. Chloe sat chilled, frightened by it.
‘Chloe,’ he said, ‘Chloe, I think you are a very special person. Very special. You’re terribly young and yet you seem to me to be very mature. Far more mature than a lot of people twice your age. I also think you’re very beautiful, very sexy, and very very nice.’
Gentle let-down, thought Chloe; giving her something nice to remember.
‘I – I feel I’ve been looking for someone like you all my life. Well, I have been. And I don’t want to let you go again. But then I’ve only known you a few weeks. It’s an absurdly short time. To base a serious decision on. For either of us. Drink your orange juice.’
Chloe drank it obediently; he refilled the glass.
‘But I’m afraid, terribly afraid of losing you. And I’ve always been good at making swift decisions. Of course you may not be. Anyway, I asked you once two weeks ago, in Fortnum’s, and now I’m asking you again. Chloe, I’d like you to marry me. Please.’
Chloe said nothing. She sat staring at him, for what felt like a long time. Then she smiled, gave out a great whoop of pleasure and threw her arms round his neck, covering his face with kisses. The orange juice spread slowly and stickily over the white sheets and the purple-patterned silk bedspread.
First interview with Richard Davies, brother to Guinevere, for Love and Marriage chapter of The Tinsel Underneath. Might agree to be quoted.
I just hated him. Right away. Couldn’t see what Guinevere saw in him. He was a clever, conceited bastard, and he was no good for her. They met at RADA and from the first moment she was obsessed with him. She said she’d never met anyone like him. Well, I wish it had stayed that way. Of course I didn’t understand all that theatre stuff, or theatre people, and their ways are not ours, but even so a person is a person, and they don’t come any more genuine and through and through good than Guinevere.
She made a breakaway for our family, going into acting. My dad is a farmer, and my grandad and great-grandad before him. I’m a farmer too. My mother is a teacher though, so maybe Guinevere gets it from her. The talent and the brainpower. You should hear Guinevere talk. It’s like reading a book. Every other word a quotation, from Shakespeare or something. Only you don’t feel she can help it, it’s not that she is trying to show you how clever she is. Oh, but she is clever. Can remember a part, or a poem or a speech and only read it once or twice. And under your eyes she becomes an old woman or a young man, and no costume or make-up or anything, just her own skills. I shall never forget the first time we saw her on the stage, apart from little school plays; it was at the theatre that RADA have for their students, the Vanbrugh I think, something like that anyway. They did St Joan, and she was St Joan, and she stood on that stage and she said that speech, you probably know it, about, what is it now? Yes, perpetual imprisonment, ‘Am I never to be free?’ And I sat there, and I cried. I could hardly believe it but I cried. And my mother cried and even my father cried. And she was there, on that stage, our Guinevere, making everyone, all the audience cry. Oh it was wonderful.
Anyway, that was the night we met him. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘how terribly proud you must be,’ and I felt like saying, you know, up yours. And I’m not like that at all, not really. And we were proud, all of us. My mother liked him, but my dad felt like I did. Fancy creature, he kept saying, fancy creature, what’s she see in him then?
We couldn’t understand it, any of us, not even my mother really. Guinevere knew, I think, and she only brought him home to Wales once, apart from the wedding, she knew it wouldn’t work. She was very defensive though, wouldn’t hear a word against him, she really loved him. The wedding was terrible, so awkward and strained, apart from Guinevere, and she was so happy, she seemed to float down the aisle in the chapel. She organized it all herself, made her dress, chose the music and the readings and everything. One of his friends read a poem; David Montague his name was, he was a conductor, but he had a beautiful voice, I’ll give him that. Guinevere read a poem too; it was very beautiful – ‘The birthday of my life is come’, was one of the lines. I stood there, listening to her, looking at her lovely face, and all her hair falling like a veil down her back, and I thought, why him? And of course it was terrible, not at first, not the first year or so, but after a while I think he got jealous of her, to tell you the truth, and they quarrelled a lot, it was hopeless really, and awful to see her happiness dying. And then she was pregnant, and after that everything went really wrong. I never knew quite why, only that she wanted that baby so very much, and he left her and she lost it.
1966
‘I’m going to see the other great love of my life,’ said Joe. ‘The one in America.’
Caroline looked at him sharply; it was one of Joe’s tricks to present her with unpleasant truths dressed up as jokes. ‘Who?’ she said.
He grinned at her, picked up her hand and kissed the fingers. ‘I love it when you’re jealous. It really turns me on.’
‘I’m not jealous,’ said Caroline irritably.
‘Yes, you are. Anyway, she’s another redhead with the longest eye-lashes you ever saw.’
‘Joe, stop it, who are you talking about?’
‘Yolande. Yolande duGrath. My old friend in Los Angeles.’
‘Oh,’ said Caroline, her voice flat suddenly. ‘The one who knew Brendan.’
‘That one.’ It hurt him oddly, how deeply affected she was by the memory of Brendan. He tried to tell himself it was just that the guy had been the first love of her life, but of course it was more than that. Brendan was not someone she had grown out of and simply cherished foolish fantasies about; he lived on, not just in her heart, but in reality, in his daughter. The daughter Caroline longed to get close to, the daughter she was obsessed with, the daughter who haunted not only her, he knew, but Chloe too.
And, Joe would admit (but only to himself and only when he had had too much to drink), of course she haunted him as well; he found Fleur oddly disturbing. It wasn’t just her beauty, her Irish beauty, the fair skin, the small fine features, the dark blue eyes, the almost black hair, nor was it the tall, slender body, the surprisingly full, luscious breasts, the long beautiful legs; nor even her sensuality, the undoubted
presence of strong hungers in her; it was the odd blend of vulnerability and intense courage, of toughness and tenderness, the longing to be loved and the insistence that she needed no one. He thought of her more than he cared to admit even to himself.
‘I wish you wouldn’t go away at the moment,’ said Caroline irritably, ‘I’m worried about this thing with Chloe and Piers Windsor.’
‘Oh I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ said Joe easily, who was sure of nothing of the kind. ‘It’s just a schoolgirl crush. She’ll get over it. And he’ll get bored.’
‘Well, I wish I had your confidence,’ said Caroline. ‘We’ve hardly seen Chloe for weeks.’
‘I have.’
‘Yes, I know, but you say yourself she’s out with him every night. It’s ridiculous. I cannot imagine what you were doing introducing her to him.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Joe. ‘She introduced herself. I’ve told you. Spilt wine over one of his thousand and one suits.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean. She’d never have met him if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Joe. ‘Pardon me for living, as Mr George Harrison said only the other day. But I have to go to LA, I have a series to write, and I have people to visit in New York as well.’
‘Will you be able to see – to see Fleur?’ said Caroline.
‘I’ll try,’ said Joe. He hoped he sounded as casual as he intended.
‘This is such fun,’ said Fleur. ‘I’m so glad you came.’
He had called her at her office, invited her to lunch; she had suggested a picnic in Central Park, and had brought chicken, bagels, cheese, fruit and Joe had brought a bottle of wine and half a dozen cans of the Diet Pepsi he knew she preferred.
She was wearing cut-offs and a white T-shirt; her dark hair, grown a little longer, caught up in a pony-tail. It was high summer, and very hot; she was tanned and her eyes looked especially dark blue. The sun had brought out some freckles on her nose; she was grinning at him, her teeth white and perfect. She had great teeth: American teeth. What did they do, this side of the Atlantic, he wondered, that made teeth grow porcelain-white and die-straight? Even Chloe had slightly crooked teeth.
‘You look great,’ he said.
‘Thank you. It was really nice of you to come and see me.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I feel I have to keep an eye on you.’
‘Why? I’m a big girl now.’
It was true, and he had been right; she was no longer in the least childlike. She had grown up even since his last visit, there was a coolness about her, a greater self-assurance, a slight distancing from him. Well she was – what? twenty-one now, officially an adult. Joe tried to keep his mind from what else might have been happening to her, to effect the change. He found it absurdly disturbing.
‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘But Caroline worries about you.’
‘I can’t think why,’ said Fleur and suddenly the old truculence was there.
He grinned at her relievedly. ‘Then you’re very stupid. Anyway, I’m off to California in the morning.’
‘Oh, God,’ she said and her blue eyes were dark with longing. ‘Oh, God, I wish I could come with you. I really feel I’m beginning to get somewhere now, you know, only I can’t progress it because I can’t get there, and it’s terrible, it’s worse than before I began.’
‘Well, come with me,’ he said, feeling his heart thud with pure fear and excitement at the prospect, shocked at the irresponsibility of what he was saying.
There was a very long moment’s pause, and then, ‘I can’t, Joe,’ she said, ‘I just can’t. I’m in the middle of about six campaigns, I should be working right now, Saturday though it is. And besides, I don’t have the money. I practically don’t have the money for my fares to work every day. Later in the year, that’s what I’ve promised myself.’
‘Fleur, I know we always have this conversation, but do you need any money? Because your mother –’
‘No,’ she said, her face closing stubbornly inwards, her eyes flashing dangerously. ‘No, I don’t. I can manage perfectly well. Thank you,’ she added slightly reluctantly.
‘OK. But I don’t like to think you’re having real problems.’
‘I’m not. Really. Now, will you be seeing Yolande while you’re there?’
‘Of course.’
‘Could you please ask her if she knows who and/or where Kevin Clint or Hilton Berelman might be. They’re not in New York. I’ve tried everything, even went to the addresses the old witch gave me. Nothing, nobody there even heard of them. And I wrote to Yolande, oh, weeks ago and she didn’t answer.’
‘Fleur, do you really think . . .’ His voice tailed away as hers lashed at him.
‘Yes, Joe, I really do think. And I really do have to. It’s so incredibly important to me. It’s beyond me why you can’t understand.’ She looked at him, and sighed. ‘However many more times do I have to tell you? Somehow, Joe, I’ve got to find out what happened. Everyone else may have forgotten my father, but I haven’t.’
‘Your mother hasn’t,’ said Joe carefully.
‘Well she has a strange way of showing it.’
‘She’s not like you,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve.’
‘I’m glad to hear you think she has one,’ said Fleur briefly.
There was a silence; then he said, ‘You could get hurt with all this, Fleur.’
‘That’s what Yolande said. I’m hurting already. It can’t get worse.’
‘I hope not,’ he said and his voice was very gentle.
‘It won’t. What are you going to LA for anyway?’
‘Oh – Sunday Times series on the Californian myth.’
‘What myth?’
‘That what happens there today happens in Britain tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that old thing.’
‘Yup. That old thing. And of course I’ll ask Yolande. I haven’t heard from her either. Not even a birthday card. It’s unlike her.’
Yolande was not in her dusty, cluttered apartment in Venice. She was in the state hospital, waxy yellow, her eyelashes still on but askew, her red hair sparse and grey.
‘So silly,’ she said, ‘they insist I’m ill and I’m perfectly well. I’m going home next week, I’ve told them.’
Joe patted her hand. ‘Sure. Don’t let them push you around.’
‘What are you doing here, Joe?’
‘Writing a series of articles. I’ve become a bit of an authority on the place.’
She patted his hand. ‘Good for you. How is that darling Fleur?’
‘She’s fine, I think. I don’t often hear from her, of course. But she loves her job and if the watch she was wearing is anything to go by, she’s doing well. Although she says she’s terribly hard up.’
‘I’m glad she’s happy. Poor little thing.’
‘She said she wrote to you,’ said Joe carefully.
‘Yes, she did. About Clint and Berelman. She’s combed New York for them without success and wants to know if I can help. I didn’t know what to do, and while I was thinking I got sick. Please tell her I’m sorry. I just wish we could dissuade her from this trail, Joe. I really do.’
‘Just try stopping Fleur doing what she wants to do,’ said Joe. ‘Yolande, who exactly were those guys?’
‘Clint was an agent, and Berelman, he was a talent scout. They were equally horrible.’
‘But – did they have anything to do with – with Brendan?’
‘Well, yes, they did,’ said Yolande. ‘In the beginning. They brought him here. But –’ Her face distorted with pain suddenly. ‘Joe, my darling, ring for the nurse, will you? I think I may need a little shot.’
The nurse came, gave her a little shot. Yol
ande sank back on the pillows, her face gradually softening, easing out of pain.
‘That’s better. I think I may – may need to sleep for a while. Come back tomorrow, darling, will you? See me then.’
Joe bent and kissed her. ‘Yes, of course I will.’
She had cancer, the doctor told Joe, breast cancer with secondaries just about everywhere. ‘It’s in the lymph glands. There’s nothing we can do, but help her along. She’s a very lovely person,’ he added, ‘you should hear some of the stories she has to tell.’
‘I have,’ said Joe.
He went back in the morning; her bed was empty. She had died in the dawn. Joe stood staring at it, stricken, feeling totally bereft.
‘She was lucky,’ said a passing nurse gently. ‘She had a heart attack. It saved her a lot of pain.’
‘Sure,’ said Joe. He sat outside in the hospital car park, rested his head on the steering wheel and wept.
He was not the only one at her funeral. Dozens of them came, the actors and actresses she had taught and coaxed and bullied and teased; some of them big names, some of them nobodies. The funeral alone was going to make great copy. Hating himself for doing it, Joe made copious notes in his head. Afterwards, he went back to the hotel and turned them into an article. Then he sat down and wondered what he could say to Fleur.
Fleur would be so upset: on two counts. She had been genuinely fond of Yolande, and she had been frantic to get a lead to Clint and Berelman. Joe was not entirely uninterested in them himself; and he was torn between irritation and amusement that Fleur’s investigations into Brendan FitzPatrick’s past had been marginally more fruitful than his own. Well, Yolande was no longer there to help them, and the trail had once again petered out; maybe they would never pick it up again, and may be that was as well. Nothing else that Fleur could learn about her father could possibly make her feel any better, or do her any good.
AN Outrageous Affair Page 37