‘It was such a lovely name. Brendan FitzPatrick. Only Hollywood could want to change that. Me too: I was called Rose Kildare. So they called me first Rose de Sharon, gave me a biblical ring as I was dancing in a terrible film about Moses, and then we dropped the de. Dear God.’ She laughed. ‘Now then, tell me what exactly it is you want to know.’
‘Well . . .’ Fleur hesitated. ‘Well, you see – oh, it’s so difficult to explain, I just don’t –’
Rose put out her hand, a slender beautiful hand, and covered Fleur’s with it. ‘Let me say it for you. You want to know how it all happened. How that story ever got into Inside Story. Whether it was true.’
‘Yes,’ said Fleur simply. ‘And who was to blame, I suppose.’
‘Now that is a difficult one. You could say all manner of people were to blame, from Naomi to the publisher of Inside Story, to everyone else in Hollywood. And maybe to an extent your father.’
‘But that’s what I don’t understand. How it was him. What did he do?’
‘Two things, Fleur. He made some enemies. And at one time, I think, he . . .’ She hesitated, as if debating whether she should really go on, and then said, ‘Yes, Fleur, I do think he might have had one or two homosexual relationships. Albeit fleetingly.’
‘Oh,’ said Fleur. She made a small, sad, shocked sound. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘You hadn’t heard?’ said Rose. She looked shocked herself. ‘Oh, Fleur. Fleur, I’m so sorry. I thought you must have seen the article, heard the gossip.’
There was a long silence. Then Fleur said, her voice very strained and odd, ‘I think I always feared it. From what – well, from what Miss MacNeice said. But she was so mad. I just buried it.’
‘And you didn’t see the article?’
‘No,’ said Fleur flatly. ‘No, they kept it from me.’ She looked at Rose, and saw her face was very white, very concerned. ‘Do you have it?’
Rose hesitated. Then she said, ‘Yes, I do. Do you want – do you really want to see it?’
Fleur lifted her chin. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I do.’
Rose looked at her for a long moment. Then she said gently, ‘It isn’t terribly nice reading, Fleur. And it isn’t that informative. Just some very strong innuendo.’
‘Could I see it?’
‘Yes. I’ll get it. Have another coffee.’
Fleur shook her head. She noticed that the knuckles of her hands were quite white from gripping the arms of her chair.
‘Byron and the Boys Brigade,’ said the headline.
What does Byron Patrick, determined bachelor and second-division lead at ACI, have to say to allegations that he was very close indeed to certain Hollywood gentlemen in the days when he was hanging around the casting couches? Predictably, ‘No comment,’ echoed by Perry Browne, his press agent. These guys really should think of another line. Byron, who was signed by Naomi MacNeice fifteen months ago, and is often to be seen three paces behind her at premières and parties, is said to be close to Lindsay Lancaster, new hot property at ACI. Does this boy know exactly what he’s supposed to be doing?
‘Who was Lindsay Lancaster?’ said Fleur. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away, not to belong to her.
‘Oh, darling, no one. Just some little starlet at the time. I seem to remember she’s married now to some poor sucker who runs a canning factory or something like that.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ Fleur read it two more times. Then she dropped her face into her hands and started to cry.
Rose got up and sat beside her and put her arms round her. ‘Don’t,’ she said, and her voice was odd and strained itself. ‘Don’t cry, Fleur. I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Fleur. ‘You couldn’t. I loved him so much. He was perfect, he was so kind and strong and brave and such fun. Even when things were really really bad, he was fun, he could make us all laugh. He was never cross, never too tired to play, to invent games, to do whatever I wanted. And now – now –’
‘Now look,’ said Rose, ‘let’s take a good look at all this. Just because he was – was homosexual, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t all those other things. Wasn’t fun and brave and strong. He hasn’t changed. Not in himself. He’s still your dad, he still loved you. You can still love him, love what he was. I did.’
Fleur stared at her. ‘Did you? Could you?’
‘Somehow, yes, I did. Fleur, listen to me. Hollywood is a terrible place. Morality takes a nose-dive as you move into it. Nobody knows who or what they are any more. It’s – well, a place where you become very pragmatic. Especially if you’re hungry. And even more especially –’ she paused and smiled at Fleur – ‘if you have a little girl who’s hungry.’
Fleur stared at her. Then she said, ‘So who do you think put the story about, Rose? Someone like Perry Browne or Hilton Berelman? My father certainly upset both of them.’
‘Yes, he did. But they wouldn’t have talked to Inside Story direct. Too much against their own interest. Deliberately to get your name linked with a homosexual scandal would be seriously unwise. Besides, those stories were almost always supplied by stringers. People paid an enormous amount for information.’
‘How do they get it?’ said Fleur in a small voice.
‘Oh, darling, it’s not difficult. Sometimes from private detectives, sent out by the magazines – they have this dreadful cover organization called Hollywood Research – sometimes from . . . well, from call girls. Call girls with tape recorders in their purses. Left on the bedside table, you know?’
‘Yes, but if the gossip was that my dad was homosexual, why should he tell a call girl that?’
‘Oh, I’m not saying in his case it was a call girl. Just letting you know what a filthy business this is. Are you really sure you want to go on with this?’
‘Yes.’ Fleur felt more and more as if she had strayed into a strange country, where night was day, black white, and all the signposts had been turned round, so that there was no hope whatsoever of finding her way out again. ‘But you really think this would have been enough to finish my father off?’
‘Well – yes. Yes, it was. As we saw. And then he dropped very fast: they took everything, the apartment, the clothes, the car; he tried to get work as an extra. That’s hard when you’ve been a star, sitting at the long table, with all the other extras, hanging around the set. But he couldn’t even get that. He was bad news by then, you see. Poor baby. And then – well –’
‘What then?’ said Fleur.
‘Oh, he – well, things got very bad.’
‘What sort of very bad?’ said Fleur. The pain was so terrible, she couldn’t think it could be worse. ‘You have to tell me.’
‘He got into the blue movie culture. Fleur, I tried to help. Really. But there was very little I could do. I mean I still didn’t have much money. Or any clout. And he was terribly proud. And he felt bad about me. Obviously.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then he started drinking, I mean really drinking. And – well, you know the rest.’
‘Yes,’ said Fleur. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ She managed to smile at Rose. ‘Some of it. Rose, who do you think sold that story to the magazine? Did he ever – did he talk to you about it?’
‘To me? No, not really. Only after it was much too late. Even then only in passing, only by inference.’
‘And what did he say? Please tell me.’
‘He said – do you want his exact words?’
‘I want his exact words.’
‘He said, “I talk too much, Rose. Always did. I’ve been an even bigger fool than I thought.”’
‘Oh,’ said Fleur again.
‘And then he wouldn’t say any more about it. I said did he want to, was there anything I could do, and he said no, it would only make matters worse and the
less I knew the better. Probably true. Then he just said, “Mud certainly sticks, Rose. Remember that.” And we never talked about it again. But, Fleur, I really don’t want you to think he was some kind of a raving gay. I can tell you we lived together for almost a year and he absolutely was not.’
‘And – and not – well, not promiscuous?’
‘I don’t think so. Fleur, he just did what he had to do. I’m sorry, there isn’t a pretty way to say it. It was silly, crazy if you like, but there’s an awful lot of people doing awfully well in Hollywood out of exactly that kind of behaviour. You have to be very strong to resist success, if it comes looking for you, even if you don’t like the terms. And especially if you need it. Sillier than sleeping with some casting director or whatever, I have to say, was alienating people like Berelman and Clint when he got to the top. That was very unwise. And he was – well, he was silly. He trusted people, talked too much. You can’t do that there.’
Fleur was silent. She felt, against all the odds, strangely comforted. Then she said, ‘Rose, I just have to find out who did that. Who talked. Can you understand that?’
‘Of course. I loved my dad too. I’d feel the same. But you have a tough job ahead of you. It’s so long ago.’
Fleur smiled at her rather weakly. ‘I’d be so grateful if you could help in any way at all. You don’t think that starlet, Lindsay Lancaster or whatever her name was, might have known, do you?’
Rose looked at her and smiled. ‘I doubt it. But of course everything’s worth a try. And I’ll see what I can come up with, although I really have told you everything. I think you’re very brave, Fleur. The important thing to remember is that in spite of all this, all the squalor and mess, your dad stayed basically a nice, kind, good guy. I was really very fond of him. And he was so afraid you’d find out.’
‘Was he?’ said Fleur. ‘Well I did, I’m afraid.’ She felt horribly near to tears again.
Rose stood up and said, ‘Time for a drink. Do you like champagne? Good. And now shall we talk about something else for a bit, like you, and what you do with your life?’
Outside again, wandering in something close to despair in Central Park, Fleur wondered if Joe had known all along. She decided he probably had and had been too much of a coward to tell her. She hated him more than ever, and thought how if she had had to discover such a thing, Rose Sharon had been the perfect person to see her through it. She felt she had truly discovered a life-long friend. She didn’t have many of those.
She felt terrible. Part of her was in shock, another part acknowledged that she had always known or, certainly, instinctively suspected, and fought the knowledge off. Every part of her hurt, ached physically. She couldn’t eat; her habitual sleeping problem was exacerbated; she lay awake night after night, restless, feverish, hanging on to Rose’s words: ‘He was still your dad, he still loved you.’ But it was hard. Very hard. She became, as always in misery, fierce, hostile; only Reuben dared to ask her what the matter was. Fleur told him she didn’t want to talk about it. ‘That’s fine,’ said Reuben. He gave her a hug. Fleur thought for the thousandth time that he was the most emotionally restful person she had ever met. She was also slightly uneasily aware that she very seldom repaid him for all the support and love he gave her. Soon, very soon, she told herself, when she was feeling better, she would make a huge effort to make it all up to him. And then something happened that did make her feel better: and drove Reuben even lower on her list of concerns.
Ten days after watching Piers Windsor’s arrival at Kennedy Airport, she was invited to a boardroom lunch with Julian Morell and Camilla North. It was to present the final campaign, the layouts, the photography, the copy for the fake tan campaign; she was pleased by her inclusion.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Mick when he stopped by her desk to tell her he wanted her at the meeting. ‘It’s a nice surprise.’
‘Well, darling, you’ve made a considerable input. And in the other spring campaign. In fact you could say the whole Flatter Yourself concept sprang from your talented little typewriter. We’re not entirely stupid, you know.’
‘Of course not,’ said Fleur, smiling at him sweetly.
The meeting went well; so high on excitement indeed was Fleur that she almost missed what Nigel said to Camilla at lunch. Almost, but not quite.
‘I expect you’ve met Piers Windsor?’ were the actual words and for the rest of her life she would hear them, and the ones that followed, over and over again, played until they were worn thin, worn out in her brain.
‘Yes, once or twice. He’s over here now, isn’t he, setting up his new show?’
‘Yes, he is, and for my sins, I have to have dinner with him tonight. Serena is desperately trying to co-opt him on to one of her charities and she’s on the board of the Warwick Theatre, where this show, what’s it called? oh yes, The Lady of Shalott, is to be put on.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Camilla. She was making it very clear that if Nigel was trying to impress her, he was not succeeding. ‘I’m afraid I really don’t like those kinds of musicals. I’m one of the very few people who hated West Side Story. A fault in me, I’m sure, but there it is. I’m sure Mr Windsor is extremely clever, and I would travel hundreds of miles to see him do Shakespeare. I wonder if you ever saw his Hamlet?’
‘I did,’ said Nigel, ‘and I thought –’
But Camilla was not to know what he thought, for Julian had called her over to discuss some finer point of copy, and with a gracious smile at Nigel she went across to him. Fleur stood there, quite still, staring at Nigel, enjoying on one extremely superficial level the discomfiture he was enduring at Camilla’s defection mid-sentence from their conversation, even while her conscious mind was occupied with something quite different, something extraordinary and disturbing and exciting. Piers Windsor had come within her reach, within her, Fleur’s, grasp; Fleur, the unsuitable, unmentionable sister, the person who of course couldn’t be mentioned. Supposing she met him, supposing she actually talked to him: supposing she told him who she was. What a dreadful thing that would be for Chloe and for Caroline; having to explain her away, and not only her, but the fact that they had not explained her before. What an irresistible prospect. Here was revenge, delicious, sweet, wonderful revenge, dangled before her, there for the plucking. How could she resist it? How could she possibly resist it?
She excused herself from the boardroom briefly at around half past one, and went straight up to the fourth floor, and Nigel’s office. There was just a chance, just a faint chance, it would not be locked. It was locked. Damn. Mavis Delmont would never in a million years let her near Nigel’s diary if she was there.
Who else might know? Well, Serena would know. She could ring her. ‘Oh, hi, Serena, this is Fleur, I just wondered if you could let me know where you’re dining with Piers Windsor tonight, I wanted to pop by and take a look at him, say hi.’
Serena’s secretary would know. Serena’s housekeeper just might know. Who else, who else? Perkins! Perkins would know. Dear Perkins, Nigel’s driver, who had always been so kind to her. He would know. But would he tell her? Probably not. Well, nobody else would, it was worth a try.
She knew where he’d be. In one of two places. He never left the building while Nigel was there, just in case he was needed. Nigel was capricious, changeable, it could not be assumed that just because he was hosting a boardroom lunch he would not suddenly decide to transport his guests to a restaurant, a club, even his home. There had been a dreadful occasion, early in Perkins’s career, when he had gone out to buy a Christmas present for his grandson, secure (as he thought) in the knowledge that a very heavy client meeting was in progress in Nigel’s office, and Nigel and Mick had decided to take the client to see a location in Chinatown in the hope of persuading him to a campaign; Perkins was not to be found, and they had had to take Mick’s car, which was a rather dirty if valuable 1950s Oldsmobile. Perkins had been
lucky to keep his job that day, he was given very clearly to understand; since then, if Nigel was in the office, he was too, usually in the small car park under the building. Fleur looked at her watch; she had already been gone ten minutes, she really couldn’t stay any longer. She would just have to hope to catch Perkins later.
The lunch wound up soon after two; Camilla, who drank nothing and ate very little either, did not greatly enjoy any function that encompassed either activity and encouraged its speedy conclusion. It was hard to imagine, Fleur thought, watching her pushing a piece of celery round her plate, that she could take a great interest in any other carnal pleasures either.
‘Could I go?’ she said to Mick, as soon as the lift doors had closed. ‘I have so much to do.’
‘Sure, darling. Thanks for coming.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Fleur, smiling sweetly round the room, focusing particularly on Bella, and left.
Perkins was down in his small kingdom; he was actually reading the situations vacant column in the New York Times, ringing various entries in red, and didn’t hear her come in. Fleur, deciding there was a God after all, and moreover near at hand, crept up behind him and put her hands over his eyes.
‘Who’s that?’ said Perkins. ‘Karen, if that’s you I’ll –’
‘It isn’t Karen, whoever she is, you wicked old thing, it’s Fleur FitzPatrick.’
‘Miss FitzPatrick. Well I never did. What are you doing down here? Frightening an old man to death.’
She took her hands away, moved round to the front of him. ‘Looking for a job, Mr Perkins, I see.’
‘No,’ he said, uneasily, uncertainly. ‘Course not. Not for me. For my boy.’
‘Oh,’ said Fleur. ‘Oh, I see. I thought he was a welder, Mr Perkins, not a –’ she bent forward and looked at the paper – ‘not a driver, with experience, English preferred.’
‘Miss FitzPatrick, you really are a bad girl. You all right, my love?’
AN Outrageous Affair Page 46