The Heartbreaker

by Susan Howatch

  The party was based in the living-room—“the drawing-room,” Moira called it—but the socialising had expanded into the conservatory and dining-room as well. By the time I had edged my way through the throng to the hall, Moira and Gavin had disappeared. I checked the dining-room but found it populated only by oldies talking about who was dying, who was dead and who had had the best obituary in The Times. Abandoning this bundle of laughs I moved down a passage past a green baize door—a feature which reinforced my fantasy about being a detective in a classic country-house whodunnit—and found myself in a vast kitchen, but this was populated by caterers stuffing empty Krug bottles into crates. Moseying back I found a toilet—or, as Moira would have said, “a cloakroom”—and paused to use the facilities before returning to the hall to discover another reception room (“morning-room?”), a book-lined study (“library?”) and a modern room, unknown in the 1930s’ murder mysteries, which housed a jumbo television plus seating for couch potatoes. This was quite a house, and the sheer size of the ground floor explained how I had managed to miss both Moira and Gavin.

  The final area I visited was the billiard-room, and from the window I saw Nicholas and Philip strolling slowly across the lawn to a distant summerhouse. Obviously there was no hope of escape just yet, but when I sank down in a leather chair to recharge my batteries I found myself unable to stop thinking of Eric, who had that morning ordered me to avoid “that revolting rent boy” at the funeral. I quite understood why Eric should still be seething as the result of last weekend’s scene when his brother Gilbert had stopped by at my house with two friends; Gavin, who had bulldozed his way across my threshold minutes earlier, had behaved monstrously and Eric had been humiliated. But the hard truth, which Eric still refused to face, was that he himself had triggered the scene by treating Gavin like garbage. I’d said as much to Eric—and his brother had backed me up—but Eric had just become angrier than ever and as soon as the guests had gone we had had a big row.

  Gavin had earlier compounded the mess by disclosing he and I had seen each other without Eric’s knowledge. Of course I should have told Eric about that visit to Richard’s flat, but I hadn’t been able to face the inevitable scene. Big mistake! I now had a far worse scene on my hands, and eventually, in a paroxysm of rage, Eric stormed out.

  We spent the next day not speaking to each other, but by nine o’clock on Sunday night I was in such a state after eating a whole pizza and drinking five scotches that I called him with a grovelling apology. He had the decency to grovel back and we were reconciled—or at least we went through the motions of being reconciled. He was still cross enough to be too busy to see me on Monday and Tuesday, but he promised to be at my house on Wednesday when I returned home from the funeral. He even promised to cook dinner. That was when I finally dared to believe that the reconciliation was real and not mere wishful thinking.

  I was still moodily contemplating the turgid state of my private life, when three middle-aged males barrelled into the billiard-room and destroyed the oasis of peace I had found there. Rudely recalled to the wake at Compton Beeches, I wondered whether to rejoin the throng in the living-room but decided I needed some more peace to work out what I currently felt about Gavin who, since arriving at the house, had shown himself capable of being thoroughly presentable. Did this make him either more or less dangerous to me? It could be argued that when he was appearing as elegant rough trade (what an oxymoron!)—naked except for designer jeans unzipped almost to the crotch—he was easier to classify as a working woman’s fantasy and dismiss, possibly with an amused sigh; there’s nothing like a touch of humour to steady a lurching stomach. Far more dangerous, it could be suggested, was the idea of Gavin as a presentable companion, someone who could fit seamlessly into my world as he demanded to be treated as an equal.

  While these uneasy thoughts were flickering through my head I had been wandering down a corridor which led away from the billiard-room, and the next moment I spotted a narrow staircase which I identified as “the backstairs.” Still reluctant to rejoin the party, I decided to extend my search for peace to the floor above.

  Up the stairs I glided to the first-floor landing, and although the staircase continued I peeled away from it to explore another corridor. However this only led me to the main staircase where a cluster of female guests were processing unsteadily towards the en-suite facilities of Moira’s bedroom. Anxious to avoid further conversation I returned to the backstairs. It was on the floor above that I finally found absolute peace and quiet—or so I thought. But I had taken no more than three steps away from the top stair when I became aware of the noise.

  I stopped. My first reaction was that someone was escaping from the emotional aftermath of the funeral by watching a porn video. Then I realised this was no video. This was a live performance and it was taking place behind a closed door no more than twenty feet from where I was now standing.

  Instinctively I opened the door nearest to me, slipped into the guest-room beyond and slumped down on the bed.

  My mind seemed to be split in two. Half of it knew that the sounds came from Gavin and Moira. The other half refused to believe it. Then I thought how mysterious people were and how little anyone knew about what really went on in other people’s lives. But finally my mind snapped together again and I thought: yes, I really believe it’s them, and yes, I’m . . . But I couldn’t at once think of the word. “Shocked” and “horrified” were somehow too banal; they missed the mark and made me sound like a Victorian bigot instead of a late-twentieth-century liberal. Dimly I realised the word I wanted was “stupefied” or even, more violently, “stunned.” I felt as if I had seen the sun go into an unpredicted eclipse. I did try to get my intellect to sort things out with its usual efficiency, but nothing happened.

  I was still grappling with this reaction when I heard a door opening down the corridor and instantly I jumped to my feet to see what was happening. Moira had slipped out and was looking up the corridor away from me. I shrank from sight before she could look down the corridor to check that the coast was clear.

  Her voice said: “You go via the backstairs—I’ll use the main staircase,” and the next moment Gavin answered: “Sure.”

  I waited for a full half-minute. Then I hurried downstairs, unbolted a side door into the garden and set off in search of Nicholas.

  VI

  I soon gave up. My high heels, sinking into the gravel path, made walking awkward, and although I saw Nicholas in the distance he failed to see me. He and Philip were strolling back to the house across the lawn, but they were a long way from where I now stood.

  Returning to the house I bumped straight into Gavin.

  “So there you are!” he exclaimed as I gasped. “I thought I’d lost you! Where have you been?”

  “Relaxing on the second floor—but unlike you I was on my own!”

  “Oh wow!” He was beside himself with delight. “You mean you couldn’t resist following me?”

  “I—”

  “Well, never mind that now, I want to show you something . . .” He seemed wholly unembarrassed that I had caught him out with another woman. Indeed he was behaving as if he and Moira had done nothing more than chat over a cup of tea. Of course this attitude is common enough in teenage shag-culture where immaturity ensures that fantasies run rife, but Gavin wasn’t a teenager. He was far too old to bucket around acting out juvenile distortions of adult relationships, and I found myself looking at him with a new rush of stunned disbelief, but unfortunately he was much too self-absorbed at that moment to notice my expression.

  “Look at this!” he was exclaiming as he opened a little pale blue box containing a pair of silver cuff links. “Richard only bought them from Tiffany’s last year so they’re not family stuff which has to go to Philip. Cool, aren’t they? Oh, and Moira says I can have not just the photo in the flat but the silver frame as well!”

  I did try to keep calm but it was impossible. Looking him straight in the eyes I said strongly: “Screwing y
our friend’s wife on the day of the funeral is disgusting behaviour, and if you just screwed her to get the photo the behaviour’s not only disgusting but pathetic as well.” Then I turned my back on him.

  Rushing to the hall I sped outside to take refuge in Nicholas’s car— only to remember that the car had been left by the church. In confusion I halted, and as I did so, Gavin raced down the steps of the porch in the hottest of hot pursuits.

  VII

  “What kind of a lawyer do you think you are?” he demanded outraged. “How can it be right to condemn a man without giving him the chance to defend himself?” And before I could reply he was saying urgently: “It wasn’t like you think. I didn’t do it for the photo. I did it because I felt sorry for her.”

  Leaning back against a BMW parked nearby I said in a voice acid enough to corrode steel: “That’s sweet. But why should I believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “You’re always lying! You lied your way through this party!”

  “Well, I’m not lying now so just listen, would you? Listen! Here’s what happened, no editing, no bullshit. Moira says to me: ‘Richard told me about you before he died—he said you liked to sail and I was pleased for him,’ she says. ‘During my marriage I went to hell and back but at the end I just felt glad he’d finally found someone who made him happy, so I want you to have something in memory of him,’ she says, and she takes me upstairs to Richard’s bedroom, and in his dressing-room she fishes out the cuff links.

  “Well, of course I thank her, and then I say I think she’s one of the bravest women I’ve met, keeping the marriage going even though Richard wasn’t switched on, and I finish up by saying: ‘I hope you’ve had lots of lovers because you’re a very attractive woman and you don’t deserve a husband who was several sandwiches short of a picnic at bedtime.’ And then . . . well, I’m just thinking how good she looks for her age when suddenly she cries: ‘Oh my God, you’re AC-DC!’—which is such a cute little wrinkly-phrase, I’ve always thought, and I laugh and say: ‘Got it!’ After all, I have to say that, don’t I, because if I’d told her I was straight she’d want to know what I was doing with Richard and I didn’t want her to find out I was a leisure-worker.

  “So then Moira says: ‘Do you really find me attractive? I’m a lot older than you,’ and I say at once: ‘I really go for older women!’—well, I had to say that, didn’t I, it would have been unkind to say anything else, but that kind of eggs her on to say: ‘I’ve never been lucky in love, Richard made me feel I never wanted to risk being so hurt again, so I’m sure I always come across to men as cold.’ And then she starts to cry and say she’s wasted the best years of her life, she didn’t stay with Richard for the sake of the children, she says, she now sees she stayed because she couldn’t bear everyone knowing the truth and pitying her. She says: ‘When I was growing up, success for a woman meant having a wealthy husband of the right class, producing a son and a daughter and doing the right charity work. So I did all that,’ says Moira, ‘but I feel now I’m a failure and I can’t bear it because I never fail, never, which was why I was my parents’ favourite and why my father was so proud of me.’ And she cries and cries.

  “God, I felt so sorry for her! You won’t believe this, but I’m a very soft-hearted bloke where women are concerned, which is why I could never earn a living doing hetero leisure-work . . . Well anyway, I put my arms round Moira and I say: ‘You’re no failure! You’re a heroine and I think you’re t’rrific!’ And the next moment we’re snogging like there’s no tomorrow and she’s gasping: ‘Not here, not here!’ because there are people around hunting for the ladies’ loo, so I say: ‘How about upstairs?’ and away we go—well, what else could I have done? I couldn’t have backed out at the last minute, it would have been cruel! And afterwards . . . well, I didn’t think she’d mind if I asked for the photo—and I was right. She says: ‘I’ll send it to you, frame and all—what’s your address?’ But I don’t want her getting mixed up with Elizabeth, so—”

  “Who?”

  “My manager. So I say to Moira—”

  “Wait a minute. This manager of yours—”

  “Yep?”

  “Has she ever called herself Elizabeth Mayfield?”

  “Nope. Who’s Elizabeth Mayfield? Never mind, don’t answer that, I want to finish my story. There’s Moira, asking for my address, but I don’t want her accessing my home in Lambeth or my business in the City so I say: ‘I’ll buy you a drink at Claridge’s—let me call you,’ and she says forget Claridge’s, we can meet at the Mayfair flat, but I shan’t do that because I don’t want this turning into an affair—and once she thinks things over she won’t want that either, she’ll realise this was just a one-off to cheer her up. Now, sweetie, be honest—did you rush to judgement or didn’t you? And since when has it been—quote—‘disgusting’ and ‘pathetic’ to be kind to a friend’s widow when she’s so obviously in need of a boost to her morale?”

  With a monumental effort I recalled Nicholas’s advice to be polite and low-key and my own determination to remain cool and laid-back. “Okay,” I said evenly, damp with the strain of staying so calm. “I rushed to judgement and I apologise. Satisfied?”

  “Oh, I wish!” he said, instantly reverting to the role of predator. “Hey, Frosty-Puss—”

  “Carta.”

  “—you do realise, don’t you, that you needn’t be jealous of Moira? You’re the one who’s special!”

  “Gavin—”

  “No, don’t bang on about that chubby heap you keep on tap, he’s history. By the way, what does your boss think about you having it off with a bloke without being married?”

  The words “polite,” “low-key,” “cool” and “laid-back” were now flashing around inside my head like a bunch of laser beams. They formed a winning display but did nothing to lower my blood pressure. “Eric and I are totally committed to a one-to-one relationship,” I said woodenly, “and Nicholas has decided this commitment is an acceptable prelude to marriage—and that’s not so incompatible with Christian tradition as you might think. Marriage as we know it is a fairly modern institution, and—”

  “But what’s stopping you from getting married?”

  “Well . . .” The laser beams were continuing to flash but more dimly. “Well, it’s absolutely none of your business,” I said, limp with the effort it required not to sound ferocious, “but I’m recovering from my first marriage.”

  “Shit, lady, if poor old Eric can’t make you forget your ex, why not pick a man who can?”

  I lost it. “Oh, get real!” I yelled, awash with the relief of casting repression to the winds. “You can’t believe I’m going to take you seriously! Grow up, wise up and get a life, for God’s sake—get a proper job, do something that’d make me respect you, take on a project that’d make me think: ‘Hey, that guy might just possibly be worth knowing!’ Because so long as you spend your life playing a hunk of beef up for auction at Smithfield, why on earth should someone like me give you the time of day?”

  The front door of the house opened, and Nicholas appeared in the porch.

  VIII

  “Time to go,” he said to me as he crossed the gravel towards us.

  I swallowed, cleared my throat and gave a small cough. “I’d better say goodbye to Moira.”

  “I said goodbye on your behalf—she’s retired to her room now.” Glancing at Gavin, Nicholas added: “Coming with us?”

  Gavin shook his head and went into one of his beautiful sulks, eyes down, lashes fanning his cheeks, mouth macho-tight, jaw a vision of sculpted elegance. I wanted to hit him.

  “Let me give you my card,” said Nicholas, “to remind you that St. Benet’s is an oasis where you can be yourself without being hassled,” but Gavin tore the card in two, dropped the pieces and walked back to the house without another word to either of us.

  “My fault,” I muttered as Nicholas did his bit for the environment by retrieving the debris. “I was trying to make him face rea
lity.”

  “Always a dangerous course to take with disturbed people!”

  “Sorry, boss, you must be thinking I’m a rotten Christian and a dim-wit employee, but I just went ballistic, I couldn’t stop myself—”

  “Dealing with people as damaged as Gavin isn’t easy, particularly when they try to push out the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to see how much flak you can take.”

  “I did try to be polite and low-key—”

  “Carta, stop beating yourself up! What exactly happened?”

  “I hardly know where to begin.”

  We were walking down the drive by this time but departing cars, many no doubt driven by over-the-limit owners, made this a hazardous exercise and we agreed to continue the conversation at the Little Chef pit stop which we had both noticed earlier a mile outside the village. Twenty minutes later I was ordering a vanilla Danish to go with my coffee, but Nicholas, who had almost certainly been too busy with Bridget and Philip to eat anything at the wake, merely looked without interest at the menu before replacing it on its stand. No wonder he was so slim.

  Picking up my fork I speared the Danish through its soft centre and said: “Gavin screwed Moira.”

  It took a great deal to dent Nicholas’s calm professional persona, but I had dented it. Moreover he was not merely ruffled but aghast. “Is that what Gavin told you?” he said rapidly. “Maybe he was fantasising to make you jealous.”

  “Nicholas, I heard them,” I said, and told him everything.

  IX

  “Maybe he’s a psychopath,” I said when my story was finished. “Doesn’t he fit the profile? Manipulative, charming, shallow, a habitual liar who leaves a trail of broken relationships in his wake, someone who’s unable to feel normal human emotions—”

  “But he seemed to be feeling all kinds of normal human emotions when the funeral ended, didn’t he? He obviously found the memory of his dead brother hard to handle, and he was close to tears when he recalled how kind Richard had been, inviting him to the house.”