by Jessica Mann
‘“What did we want? It is perfectly simple to explain. It is implicit in Julian’s verse of the period. We were crusaders against puritanism. We wanted the abolition of censorship and repression. They were still using the Defence of the Realm Act to keep us quiet, Dora it was known as, look it up why don’t you? I still fight that good fight, you’ll see my name under all the letters to The Times. We believed in living for the moment with beautiful things around us. I hadn’t an artist’s vision, but the idea of the artist moved me. Liberty seemed intrinsic in it. That’s why I have always fought for the freedom of the creator. Petitions, marches, expert evidence in court. Rex’s trial was my first time. Julian and I both testified, though there had been some disagreement and Rex didn’t live there any more, but both of us went into the box for him. Anything to fight the killjoys.
‘“Jix. Sir William Joynson Hicks, the worst Home Secretary of the century, in league with the Director of Public Prosecutions. They wouldn’t have anything that Queen Victoria might not have liked. Their fits of propriety were comic in a way but they had tragic consequences. Rex served three months in spite of all our protests. Julian got his mother to go and see the Lord Chancellor, but of course it didn’t help. It was terrible, destructive, it would be for any artist. Afterwards he had to go abroad, but once he was back in the country he was charged with another offence, a scandalous affair, for I always supposed that the book was brought in by agents provocateurs employed by the Customs themselves. It was Tumuli, and it had been published in Paris, the case should never have been brought. I don’t believe that Rex would have survived another spell in prison. Julian Tapsell and I were discussing how to smuggle him safely out of the jurisdiction when he died, very unwise of us no doubt, but we weren’t the respectable citizens then that we later became in our different ways. Of course I never gave up the fight against censorship. I appeared at all the obscenity trials. The Recorder of London always groaned when I entered the witness box. That was Sir Ernest Wilde, I’d met him at my parent’s house. He didn’t like it that I wouldn’t swear. I always insisted on affirming. ‘Not him again,’ he’d say. Once I asked whether he was asleep and his clerk poked him awake.
‘“They weren’t good days. Julian Tapsell was right to seek a new world. I haven’t ever blamed him for preferring America. You won’t get any old man’s nostalgia from me. Restrictive, repressive. You recall Richard Aldington’s words? I have them by heart. ‘The great English middle class, that dreadful squat pillar of the nation, will only tolerate art and literature that are fifty years out of date, eviscerated, detesticulated, humbuggered, slip-slopped, subject to their Anglicised Jehovah. So look out my friend. Hasten to adopt the slimy mash of British humbug and the British fear of life or expect to be smashed.’
‘“Very true, don’t you think? Fifty years on, the great middle class is beginning to tolerate Rex, as Aldington predicted. But I wasn’t smashed. Julian wasn’t smashed. Rex . . . perhaps it was as well that he died. What happens to such men as they grow old? He didn’t care about public opinion. He only showed and published his work because he had to make some money to live on. Exhibitions are only for exhibitionists, he used to say, but they made him exhibit, and that was a disaster, landing him in gaol. He never cared whether he was published. He worked for himself. I doubt whether he would have learnt to bask in the public gaze as Julian has. I have read his Californian work. Some of it is quite fine, but none so powerful as what he wrote in those early years when we were all young and obscure. Think of the poem he wrote after Rex’s death, Elegy for a Lost Friend, you will recall the images of hellfire . . .”’
Lawrence Cory did not finish reading the article. He was not interested in Danny Pedlar, or in Julian Tapsell’s poetic imagery. He was not very much interested in Rex. He did not really believe that anyone else would be interested in reading what he had to say about Rex. He did not even like Rex any more. In the same way that a word, concentrated on for too long, looks wrongly spelt, so Lawrence could no longer think what he had seen to admire in Rex’s work. I don’t give a damn, he thought, about Rex’s life. He was good riddance in that burnt-out caravan.
‘You need a holiday,’ Zoe said. He was run down and sad, very natural after his father’s death.
*
The Corys took a vacation in Mexico where Zoe went sightseeing in dark glasses and a wig. Lawrence, exasperated by the failure of that stratagem, accused her of seeking recognition wherever she went. Zoe restrained herself from reproaching him with jealousy. They did not quite quarrel.
When they got back to Hollywood, a letter requesting a final answer to Basil Hutber’s offer was waiting for them.
‘It’s out of the question,’ Lawrence said.
‘Of course it’s out of the bloody question,’ Zoe’s producer said. He had called round to discuss an update on Stacey Stewart’s image. Changing times, greater permissiveness, artistic freedom: he wanted Stacey to get laid. After all, he said, Zoe Meredith of all people could hardly have moral objections. Lawrence, however, had.
Zoe quarrelled with the producer. There was fog. Her contract came up for renewal. She realised that she had been forgetting to take the pill.
‘A Freudian slip?’ she said.
Lawrence was competitive in self-abnegation but Zoe was not a very bad actress. She made him believe that she was tired and bored; that she would love to live in Carmell; that she thought it was the moment to start their family.
Lawrence accepted his offer and Zoe refused hers. Her agent flew out to remonstrate.
‘You have to be crazy. Do you know what it will be like there? Out in the sticks? The middle of bloody nowhere? Let Lawrence go without you.’
‘I want to go.’
‘Liar.’
‘You can find me other parts. I can work in England.’
‘You don’t know what you are saying.’
‘I shall soon find out.’
Chapter Eighteen
As a member of the Digby family Chantal Digby had naturally consulted Wootton Hardman when she needed a solicitor’s advice, and now a very young Mr Wootton was the executor of her estate. She usually conducted her life by telephone and so few of her papers were interesting, although, as Mr Wootton explained to the policeman, her life might have been amusing to know more about. Unfortunately the files held mainly bills, circulars and begging letters. But this – and the young man was evidently pleased with himself for having spotted it – might be significant.
‘It’s the name, you see. I recognised it. Of course, keeping up with the daily press is part of a solicitor’s job. One has to know what’s going on. Of course, if I’d specialised in criminal law . . .’ He paused, seeing himself in wig and gown, swaying juries with his eloquence.
The police constable was in plain clothes, his suit as sober as young Wootton’s, his tie equally indicative. Both men had made the immediate, silent decision not to say ‘You must know old so-and-so.’
‘May I have a look, sir?’
Mr Wootton refrained from saying ‘Don’t call me sir.’ He held out the letter, which had been written by the Matron of a Methodist Home for the Blind in Derbyshire.
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your letter of the twelfth ult. to Mrs Gwen Cory. I am replying to it myself since she is not well enough to dictate her own answer, and indeed was not in a state to understand your query. She has been with us for many years now, and her mind wanders. I did feel that it was my duty to open the letter to her though, and can tell you the address of Mr Allan Cory, as you requested. I am sure that the rule against giving addresses does not apply to you. In fact Mrs Cory herself is in our Digby Ward! Mr Cory’s address is 234 Shirley Avenue, London SW9. It is many years since a member of your family came here, but may I say how welcome you would be to visit us . . .’
The policeman said, ‘This is dated three months ago.’
‘I know. I have to admit that I have not hurried over Lady Digby’s estate.’
‘The
law’s delays?’
‘When there is no immediate family to be inconvenienced, one tends to be more leisurely.’
‘Perhaps you would explain why you think this letter would be of interest to us, sir.’
‘Well, it’s the name. You must know it, Allan Cory? He was the poor bloke whose body got found in Dame Viola Hutber’s cellar.’
‘And?’
‘Well, you see what I mean. Two accidental deaths, both in very peculiar circumstances, my client herself and the man she enquired about. There must be a connection. You can’t just ignore it.’
‘I will inform the appropriate authority sir.’
‘What does that mean? Feed it into some great computer?’
‘It was very public spirited of you to report the matter.’
‘Yes, well.’ Mr Wootton, who was easily bored by the humdrum nature of a profitable commercial and family practice, was disappointed but realistic. ‘I daresay there’s nothing in this either but I may as well mention it now you’re here. It seemed peculiar at the time, and now that my client has died herself in such mysterious circumstances . . .’
‘Hardly mysterious. The verdict was accidental death. She had food poisoning.’
‘Coroners’ verdicts – you know what they can mean.’ Mr Wootton was determined not to be cheated of his drama.
‘You have something else you wish to report then?’ The policeman’s voice was bored and Mr Wootton said sharply, ‘I have indeed and I wish it to be passed on to your superiors.’
A quirk of the policeman’s mouth gave personality to his official mask. ‘Good God,’ the solicitor said. ‘You’re young Stapleton. Last time I saw you –’ The memory was perhaps tactless. Anthony Wootton, a house prefect, had punished the junior boy for cheek by what their school called cold tubbing, the immersion in icy water almost more disagreeable than a beating would have been and leaving no scars, except, perhaps, mental ones. At a greater age, no doubt, it would be possible for Stapleton and Wootton to feel nostalgic about such things. Only a few years away from them, the one felt ashamed, the other unforgiving. Both tacitly agreed to ignore the connection between them.
‘About Lady Digby?’ Constable Stapleton said.
‘She came to consult me not long before her death. It was an unexpected query. She wanted to know whether there was a statutory limitation on a murder charge. I assured her that the statute did not apply to capital offences, and she went on to ask the position of accomplices and accessories, and about the crime of concealing a crime. I formed the impression that the questions related to the autobiography she was having written for her – or intended to have written.’
‘Did she give any details?’
‘She said the event she was thinking about had taken place a long time ago. I knew that, of course, since she had lived out of the jurisdiction since before the last war.’
‘Did she give you any idea what it was about?’
‘No, but of course I was intrigued and had a look at the files afterwards.’ Mr Wootton indicated the rows of black tin boxes on which were painted the names of distinguished clients, presumably as advertisement, the policeman thought, for in so modern a building, filled, as he had seen as he was conducted to this fifteenth floor, with such modern equipment, most information must be stored in microchips not filing boxes. These names were Wootton Hardman’s guarantees of respectability: The Earl of Dorset, Lady Anne Sholto, Sir Magnus Paull, Princess Walburga von Horn. ‘I did find an episode when Lady Digby was somehow concerned with a violent death. It was in 1929, while she was still married to our client, and we acted for her when she gave evidence as to identity in a Coroner’s Court. All rather unseemly, not my great-uncle’s scene at all. A painter called Rex had burnt himself to death in some love nest in the home counties.’
‘But that wasn’t murder?’
‘No, no, accidental death. Like Chantal Digby’s own.’
‘It doesn’t really sound to me as though there is very much for us in it.’ On the principle of kissing the rod that beat them, younger boys had been forced to thank prefects for their punishments. Constable Stapleton said the words again now. ‘Thank you very much, Wootton.’ And now, as then, Wootton regretted his own actions.
Chapter Nineteen
The modern heroine arrives at the romantic mansion by aeroplane.
It was no novelty to Stacey Stewart, who often embarked on her adventures by air. Stunt girls leapt from hovering helicopters, or dangled from parachutes, to land Stacey at her cardboard castles or her villas full of villains.
The only particular in which St Uny’s Abbey conformed to the scenes of such daring enterprises was in that a neighbouring farmer whose son was at school had sent his crop-spraying four-seater to uplift Zoe and Lawerence Cory from Prestwick Airport.
The aircraft was small and patched disconcertingly with rust. The pilot flew low over fields blackened by burnt stubble, and then gave his passengers a view of the lake and the town of Carmell before landing them in the wall-girdled grounds of the Abbey, on the all-weather running track.
From the air they could see that the grey stone buildings were extended by temporary classrooms made of creosoted planks. The unnatural blue of a swimming pool shimmered within the walls of a disused vegetable garden. From the sky it looked like a painting by David Hockney, its diving board a white wedge, its surround acrylic-smooth, but nobody was swimming. As the school prospectus indicated by omission, it was unheated, and September was cold in the north.
Zoe did not expect the luxuries of fantasy in this new life. She knew, even if not everybody else seemed to, the distinction between what was actual and what was imagined. Stacey Stewart was an invented heroine, and Zoe Meredith was not a heroine at all except in her own story and to herself. But a good many people looked at Zoe and saw Stacey. They appeared to believe that what they saw framed and flattened in six hundred and twenty-five lines existed outside them.
It had been hard to get the part and hard to keep it; but now Zoe realised that it might be harder still to shed it. Stacey Stewart the Sleuth, her life suspended, or even ended, was real and strong and independent of studios and scriptwriters in the minds of her followers. But now Zoe had a new part to play.
Zoe Cory, the Assistant Headmaster’s Wife.
A line of people waited to greet the Corys. Half a step behind her husband, Zoe stepped towards the waiting handshakes.
‘Stacey Stewart!’
‘Zoe Cory,’ she said correctively.
The new characters were introduced, the leading men by Rainsford Hutber, the supporting wives by Gillian. The second master, George Jenkin, and Mrs Jenkin; the Bursar and Mrs Browne; the Head of Science; Matron. There was a week to go until the beginning of term. Lawrence thanked them for cutting holidays short to welcome him. He was assured that it was the least they could do.
‘And Mr Hutber?’
‘Of course, you hadn’t been told, Headmaster.’
In the title was the message. Zoe Cory, the headmaster’s wife.
‘Not—? Oh Rainsford, I am so sorry.’
But it was not as bad as that. Basil had had another stroke but was expected to recover, though probably not to work again. He was in the local hospital.
So this was Lawrence’s kingdom. Zoe squeezed his hand to show discreet congratulations and he returned the pressure absent-mindedly, but then moved away to talk to the men, and the women, in a parallel movement so neat that it might have been rehearsed, moved away to show his wife her home.
‘You will be looking forward to having your own house to run,’ Gillian Hutber said.
Zoe had never run a house before. In California the house was provided complete with furniture, equipment and domestic help. In London with Lawrence and before that with a series of girlfriends or boyfriends, Zoe had lived in furnished flats that were little more than occasional shelters. Her childhood homes had been married quarters in whichever country the State Department sent her father to, decorated from time to ti
me to suit the pretty ladies who from time to time moved in, and out.
In her new life Zoe would be domesticated. She would learn to cook and mend, she would hang wallpaper, she would make curtains. Her children would cherish memories of the comfort she created. Her husband’s pupils would always remember her hospitality.
‘You haven’t any children,’ Mrs Jenkin stated, and went on to talk of her own three, and of her daughter, and the Hutbers’, being pony-mad together. They were out at the stables every hour that God sent. ‘But luckily exams don’t matter for girls. We like them to be in the fresh air.’
Zoe planned to have four children who would grow up in the suffocating atmosphere they needed to measure their escape against. They would be protected. The girls’ education would be as good as the boys’. ‘I have no regrets,’ Zoe had told a reporter on her thirtieth birthday, and the words had headed an article illustrated, inevitably, with that ancient, naked pose, and in which the list of men with whom Zoe had been seen was boringly recited.
But here and now was the first time she thought of regrets. Her flamboyant public past might not suit the new image. Lawrence had said not to worry, insisting that ‘They only have to look at you to know what you are really like.’ His manner was self-confident and reassuring again as it was when they first met and married, his whole personality, even his appearance, seemed expanded into life again like a desert plant after the rare rain. He said that in Britain, if not in the United States, old misdemeanours could be redeemed. Men disgraced in ‘sex scandals’ could be honoured by the Queen, could be members of government, could be made chairmen of public authorities, not disbarred from positions of honour even by past prison sentences.