At Death's Door

by Robert Barnard

  “No, not that. She had a terrible childhood—neglected, abused, even physically maltreated. That’s her story, if she wants to tell it to you. I know it’s true, because I know Cordelia doesn’t lie. But there’s another side: She does admire her mother tremendously as an actress. It was something that she clung tight to all through her childhood: She does this to me, but it’s part of the process of being a great star. She’s seen everything her mother’s been in since she was six, and she has a tremendous archive of reviews. She also has a host of backstage memories, and she’s interviewed people she’s acted with. That part of the book is almost finished. I’ve read it. It’s brilliant. There’s an account of Myra’s Rebecca West, for example, that’s uncanny. It brings it totally to life, so that you feel you’ve seen it, yet Cordelia was only thirteen when Myra did Rosmersholm. That part of the book could be published on its own, and it’s pure admiration, almost hero worship.”

  “I see . . . But in the other part it’s to be no holds barred?”

  Pat shrugged. “There’s no reason for her to pull her punches. Myra is a monster, and Cordelia’s been the main victim.”

  “But isn’t she worried the publisher will simply reject it?”

  Pat smiled. “Not really. Of course, Cordelia will be willing to negotiate, go into a huddle with the lawyers and so on. But if they find it just too hot to handle, then the part on Myra’s stage career can be published, lavishly illustrated. High-class fan stuff. If they put a veto on the other part, Cordelia’s going to lodge it with her bank. Her mother will know that as soon as she dies this account of her personal life will be published. That, in a way, will be almost better—a revenge, but a long-drawn-out one, hanging over Myra for the rest of her life. I suppose you think that sounds quite disgusting?”

  “Yes, I do rather,” said Roderick unhesitatingly. “Revenge is never a pretty thing.”

  “But sometimes it’s necessary. You can’t imagine what Cordelia was like when we first met. A nervous, listless wreck, unsure of herself, unable to relate to other people. Myra did that. Deliberately, over the years, Myra did it. Since Cordelia was an adolescent, Myra has made it her great mission to demolish any confidence she might feel in herself and her own abilities. Anything she tried to do was ridiculed, any qualities she has were rubbished. That’s why this book is necessary. Cordelia has got to write it and then get on with a life, a career of her own. She’s got to write Myra out of her life.”

  Pat had become most eloquent. Roderick sat thinking.

  “I suppose that makes a sort of sense,” he said at last with a sigh. “We all have to get our parents out of our systems somehow. My father was a sexual pirate who made occasional visits to the family circle. I’m an obsessively faithful husband, a devoted family man. Caroline’s father was a bit of a crook; he had a multitude of business enterprises, and he sailed all of them on to the windy side of the law. Caroline is a slave to duty, endlessly sifting the moral implications of what she does. I suppose some such process is operating with Myra and Cordelia. Not knowing Myra well, I can’t precisely puzzle it out, but I take your word for it that she’s given Cordelia good cause. You know her, and you’ve seen the consequences in Cordelia.”

  “Actually I don’t know her,” said Pat.

  “Don’t know her? Then you don’t think—?”

  “That Cordelia may be exaggerating? No. Everything I’ve heard in the village, everything I’ve heard when Cordelia is talking to Myra’s fellow actors, bears out what she says. She must be one of the most hated people in the theater, and that’s saying something. I may say the reason I haven’t met Myra is that she made it clear to Cordelia and anyone else who would listen that she had no intention of bestowing any notice on some scrubby little down-at-heel schoolteacher that her daughter had the bad taste to take up with.”

  “Did she actually say that to Cordelia?”

  “She did. And remember, Cordelia may have grown up a bit twisted—with that upbringing that was inevitable. But she is totally truthful. If she says a thing has happened, it has happened. She knows her mother as no one else does, because she knows what she’s done. She’s had it done to her.”

  Pat had been unusually communicative, even eloquent. Now he lapsed into his characteristic silence. By common consent they got up and began the walk back to the Old Rectory.

  Roderick and Caroline agreed it was time to let the topic of the biography be. There was nothing they could do, certainly not for the moment. Soon Cordelia would be finished with the material at the Rectory, and she and Pat would move on. Roderick and Caroline relaxed and enjoyed having the young people around. As they got closer, Roderick seemed to regard Cordelia more as a daughter than as a sister—a daughter for whom he no longer needed to feel any responsibility. One evening they went, all three, down to the tent and sat around on the lawn eating a supper of sausages and beans (they had no positive evidence that Cordelia and Pat ever ate anything else) and drinking red wine. There was lots of laughter. Pat played the mouth organ, which enchanted Becky. Cordelia told some backstage stories, and since she chose them carefully and they reflected no discredit on her mother, they could be enjoyed without embarrassment. Becky was so in love with the fading light, the two young people, and the uproarious cheerfulness that she was allowed to stay up well beyond her normal bedtime. It was nearly ten o’clock when they made for the house, and Caroline went straight up to check on the invalid and to put Becky to bed.

  It was while she was upstairs that the phone rang.

  “Maudsley 7536,” said Roderick.

  “Mr. Cotterel? Roderick Cotterel?”

  He knew the voice. Surely he knew the voice. But it was the voice of none of their friends.

  “Speaking.”

  “You may not remember me, but we met a long time ago. I’m Myra Mason.”

  She did not say Dame Myra Mason. The tone of voice said dame. Roderick smiled at the fiction that he might not remember her.

  “I remember you very well indeed, of course,” he said, making his voice as cordial as possible.

  “Happier times,” said the rich, velvet voice. It was a voice that changed moods and attitudes very quickly. Now it was in the mood reminiscent. “You were even younger than me, I remember. I expect you were quite shocked at the situation.”

  “I had ceased being shocked by anything my father did before I was into my teens,” said Roderick. “Though I was sometimes embarrassed.”

  He was at once conscious of having committed a species of disloyalty and of having been led into it. Probably Myra was good at that.

  “People tell me that the old man is—I don’t quite know how to put it—”

  “Senile. Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  The voice had acquired new undertones, this time of concern and compassion.

  “It must be a terrible burden for you—and your wife. Sad, too. Because, whatever else one might say, he had a fine mind. . . . Time to let bygones be bygones, I think.”

  “Oh, I think the time for recriminations is long gone by,” said Roderick. Though personally he doubted if it was for Myra.

  “Yes . . . You’re probably wondering why I’m ringing you after all this time. The fact is, my daughter and her boyfriend have taken off on a camping holiday, and I heard in the pub here tonight that someone had had a postcard from them, from Sussex. I wondered if by any chance they’d come to see you.”

  “Yes, they’re staying here.”

  “They’re staying with you?”

  “They’re camping in the garden.”

  “I thought she might . . . Silly, silly girl. She’s always been so taken up with her father. So idiotic.”

  “Do you think so? It seems perfectly natural to me. Especially when her father was a famous writer.”

  “It can only end in tears. I’ve always told her so. And particularly when . . . when he’s in the condition he is in.”

  “My wife tells me she’s seen him. I don’t think it particularly upset her.”

>   “But what’s the point? And how do you think I feel, having all that old business raked over again?”

  It was the first time a genuine note had intruded into the vocal performance—a note of rich self-pity. Roderick decided to be direct.

  “Forgive me, Dame Myra, but I had the impression at the time that both you and my father rather relished the fight.”

  “Did you? Did you? . . . Well, we won’t go over that again. I’m glad the silly pair are safe. They’re so young. . . . One worries. . . . Has Cordelia, I wonder, asked a lot about your father and me? About the affair?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “She hasn’t asked to see papers, has she? Letters?”

  The steel in her voice made Roderick feel absolutely miserable, like a peccant schoolboy.

  “She has, yes.”

  “I hope you showed her nothing. What reason did she give?”

  “There has been talk of a biography of you—”

  “Complete nonsense.”

  “. . . of a book, anyway.”

  “There will be no book. Do I gather that you’ve shown her things?”

  “Well, yes. He is her father, after all.”

  “What has that got to do with anything? This book is about me. . . .” The tone of voice changed abruptly. “Oh, I realize I haven’t been the perfect mother. What stage person has been? We are notoriously bad parents. We can’t give them the stability, and children are so very conservative. . . . Though really, when I come to think about it, little Miss Cordelia wasn’t so badly done by. At least I never sent her away, always had her with me. She had a home—a lot of stage children have nothing but a prop basket. . . . When I think of the Broadway offers, the Hollywood offers, I’ve turned down. No, I said, I have a child, and I can’t disrupt her home life and her education. Over and over, I had to turn them down. It’s the reason my career has never really taken off in the States. And now she does this. . . .”

  “Maybe this is just a temporary estrangement,” began Roderick.

  “Maybe. The silly goose has been made to see reason in the past. Only now she has that long streak of a school-teacher to egg her on. I think I’m going to have to—”

  Myra stopped. For a few seconds Roderick heard breathing, then there was a click. He did not think they had been cut off.

  He stood thinking for a moment. What was it Myra thought she was going to have to do? Come down to Maudsley? If so, then the children—as he thought of them—ought to be warned. He realized he had now gone over to their side. He went into the garden, but as he walked toward the tent, he heard the sounds of lovemaking. He turned back and locked the door behind him. There would be time enough in the morning.

  Chapter 5

  RODERICK WENT DOWN to tell them early next morning. They were sitting outside their tent, eating eggs and bacon and fried bread cooked on their Primus. So they could manage something other than sausages and beans.

  “Your mother rang last night,” Roderick said to Cordelia.

  “I thought it wouldn’t be long,” she said equably. She fiddled nervously with the food on her plate, then looked up at him with one of her dazzling smiles. “I suppose news of one of our postcards has got back to her. Did she throw a rage?”

  “No-o,” admitted Roderick. “Though of course she wasn’t pleased.”

  “Did you tell her I was looking at your father’s letters and papers and things?”

  “That was what she wasn’t pleased about. . . . Before she rang off, she said: ‘I think I’m going to have to—’ ”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “I rather thought she meant she was going to have to come down here.”

  “I think you’re right.” She put aside her plate and looked up at him again with a sunny smile. “Great . . . just great. Thank you very much for telling me.”

  So Cordelia didn’t seem to be worried. Indeed, she seemed to look forward to such a visit with relish. Roderick turned and went back to the house.

  Cordelia worked in the little library as usual, but at lunchtime Pat came back, and they ate together on the lawn. Looking out from the kitchen, Roderick saw that Pat had brought a newspaper from the village, and they were poring over it and the AA Book. When Cordelia came back into the house after lunch, she announced:

  “We don’t think Myra will come down until Sunday. She’s in John Gabriel Borkman at the National every night until Saturday. Then she has a week off. That’s when she’ll choose. And we guess she’ll stay at the Red Lion. Though it could be the Imperial in Cottingham—it’s grander, and Mother likes grandeur. But it’s farther away, and we wouldn’t be so get-at-able from there, so we think she’ll stay in Maudsley.”

  It was almost as if Cordelia were planning the visit.

  In fact, that evening, in the Red Lion, where she and Pat had become quite well known, Cordelia said to the landlord: “We think my mother may be ringing up to book a room here before long.”

  “Don’t know about that, miss. We’re nigh on full. . . . Oh, would your mother be this Myra Mason that people have been going on about?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, well, then, we’ll surely have a room for her. A very fine actress, people do say.”

  A very fine actress, and a dame. In spite of the summer saturation by tourists, this was a combination rare enough to startle a landlord out of his habitual cynicism. In fact, he mentioned the possibility of her coming to his regulars several times in the course of the evening, and when the phone call did come next morning, he mixed affability and servility in equal measure and promised the well-bred, throbbing voice the best room in the inn, though it meant depriving a good and regular patron and his wife of it. The main use of a title—as titled people say with such monotonous regularity—is that it gets you a good table in restaurants. This was the rural equivalent.

  The landlord told Cordelia and Pat, when they were in on Thursday night, that Dame Myra was coming on Sunday and had booked initially for three days.

  Myra, it seemed, was on everybody’s minds. The fact that the father of her child had been one of the great novelists of his generation seemed to have been forgotten—as the old man upstairs, in his senility, had somehow become an irrelevance. Cordelia now, like the rest, seemed totally preoccupied with her mother. On Friday, in some fitful sunshine, she took a break from the dreary study and, walking in the shrubbery, came upon Roderick wielding clippers.

  “How did you come to meet my mother?” she asked abruptly, as if continuing a train of thought. Roderick put the clippers down and thought.

  “I think my father wrote me a letter inviting me down for a few days. He would do that, you know. We’d hear nothing from him for months, and then suddenly there’d be a visit or a letter, as if quite by chance he had remembered that we existed. Only by then the visits had stopped, because they distressed my mother too much and upset us children. . . . He was by any ordinary standards a quite terrible father, you know. Anyway, they’d rented at that time a cottage in Norfolk. That would be—let me see—19—”

  “—’60. Probably early 1960, if she was visibly pregnant with me,” said Cordelia.

  “That’s right. I was in my last year at Oxford. He invited me, making it clear he was living with a woman—‘a rather remarkable young lady,’ I seem to recall he called her in the note. I remember, too, that I was rather flattered that he considered me man enough to accept the situation. That’s why I decided to go, I suppose: to show how sophisticated I was about such things. But I remember I said nothing about the visit to my mother.”

  “Your mother is an enigma in all this,” said Cordelia thoughtfully. “I’ve virtually found no mention of her in the letters. What kind of woman was she?”

  “Intelligent, self-effacing, and Catholic. There was no question of a divorce—and since my father never met anyone he wanted to marry and probably realized after the second attempt that marriage was not for him, the question never came up. They just lived separate lives.”<
br />
  “So what kind of establishment did you find when you got to Norfolk?”

  “Odd.” Roderick scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Or so it seemed to me at the time. I expect I had some stereotype in my head of a dirty old man and a luscious young thing. It wasn’t like that at all. For a start, though I could see that Myra was naturally a beautiful girl, she certainly wasn’t looking it. Pregnancy did not suit her.”

  “Probably that’s why she’s never gone in for it again,” said Cordelia, chuckling. “That and the fact that children have to be looked after. Or at any rate, that other people rather expect them to be.”

  “Yes . . . Anyway, here was this very intense, self-possessed, ambitious girl who’d had to throw up the part of Ellie Dunn at the Haymarket when the pregnancy started showing. I say ‘self-possessed’—maybe ‘self-obsessed’ would be a better term. She was clearly half-resentful of the pregnancy and wondering what stage offers she would get after the baby was born. She was without doubt pleased, even proud, at having so famous a lover, yet she made no apparent effort to make him happy or comfortable. Her housekeeping was atrocious.”

  Cordelia laughed delightedly.

  “It would be!”

  “This was the dawn of the era of convenience foods. They were not as good then as they are now. All the food we ate was frozen, or from tins, and even then it was always overcooked or undercooked. My father was never a gourmet, but he always liked a minimum of creature comforts. I remember he got a woman in from the village to cook my welcome dinner. The other meals he tried to make a big joke out of, with me.”

  “It’s very typical. I remember at some crisis or other my mother taking me to a cottage in Lincolnshire, to ‘get away from it all.’ We had to come back after five days, because I was half-starved.”

  Roderick was thinking back.

  “I said the situation was odd. The difficulty was to find the basis for the relationship. Sex, of course—but it had become much more than casual, so there had to be something else. She was wild to get him to write a play for her. Badgering wouldn’t be too strong a word.”