I was horrified. David knew the scandal would help publicize the film. His betrayal had wounded me deeply, but this was worse. He was prepared to sacrifice an ignorant girl at the altar of greed so that he and his money men would be welcome in America. Unlike me, he could leave behind everything he no longer wished to be associated with: Clara Hope, the divorce, the scandal … and his wife.
His wife. Who was she? How long had they been married? Why did they wish to divorce? Did she know about me? Had I actually seen, or even meet her, among those bejewelled butterflies who fluttered around David with their flat chests and flat hair and kohl-rimmed eyes?
“Oh, Aidan.” I folded my arms on the table and put my head on them. “I wish I were dead!”
“No, you don’t.” He hauled me to my feet. “Come on, a breath of fresh air will do you good.”
An insistent March wind blew as we crossed Bayswater Road and entered Hyde Park. We walked necessarily briskly, I with my gloved hands tucked into my coat sleeves, Aidan with his hands in his pockets, both of us with hats pulled down over our foreheads.
The trees along the edge of the park were bare. The sky was white, brightening occasionally, but holding the threat of rain. It reflected my gloomy mood. We walked in silence for a long time, my mind busy. My usual strategy of pretending to be someone else failed me; I thought only of my folly and its consequences. Aidan had been kind, but I could not expect further help from him. And whatever happened, I would have to leave 23 Raleigh Court as soon as possible. Unmarried women did not stay with unmarried men, even under ordinary circumstances. With the threat of public scandal hanging over me, it would be another piece of dirt the press could dig up on me. And, unforgivably, on Aidan.
Horrified by this thought, I must have gasped, because Aidan slowed his pace. “Am I going too fast? Sorry.”
We had come to a bench, so we sat down. I put my chin into the collar of my coat so that he wouldn’t see my agitation. “Aidan,” I began, “I have decided what to do.”
“Hah! Doesn’t involve murder, does it?”
“No, it involves some sensible behaviour, for a change.”
Grimacing, he took out his cigarettes. “Good God, sensible behaviour? How tedious!” He tapped a cigarette on the packet, but didn’t light it. “So what is it?”
“I can’t stay at Raleigh Court any longer. You can’t know how grateful I am to you for putting me up, but tomorrow I’ll be on my way.”
He frowned, the unlit cigarette still between his fingers. “May I ask where you intend to go?”
“Well, David gave me five pounds, and I’ve got money in the bank and in a trust my father opened for me, so I’ll look for a room to rent. David Penn Productions are still paying me, so I’ll be all right.”
“I see. And what will you do?”
“What I should have done in the first place. Go to the police.”
He lit the cigarette and smoked absently, his eyes on the faraway trees. I waited for a few moments, but he did not speak. Feeling uncomfortable, I busied myself adjusting the angle of my hat.
“Clara, listen to me,” he said at last. “I insist that you and I rub along at Raleigh Court for as long as necessary. This is not your Welsh valley, this is Bayswater.” He considered. “Well, the edge of Maida Vale actually, so that’s even better. No one gives a damn who an actor has in his flat.”
“But when this … this story gets into the newspapers,” I protested, “imagine what they’ll write about us!”
Aidan looked amused. “‘Leading Man and Leading Lady in Love Nest!’ It even alliterates!”
“Please, I’m serious.”
“I know you are, but so am I.” He had stopped smiling and his eyes had got narrow and flinty. “The story, as you call it, may never even get into the newspapers.”
“Exactly!” I was relieved that he had understood. “That’s why I’m going to the police! I know they won’t believe my word against David’s, but at least I’ll have done the right thing, won’t I?”
“Whether they believe you or not, there is no point whatsoever in going to the police,” he said, not condescendingly but merely as a matter of fact. “Their job is to solve crime, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that in this instance no crime has been committed.”
I was nonplussed. “But the man was hiding in the bathroom!”
“Had he broken into the bathroom through the window?”
“No, of course not. David had let him in.”
“And did David attack you, or threaten you with a weapon?”
“No, but he—”
“Pushed you down on the bed, pinned your arms behind you and kissed you passionately?”
“No! Well, that may be what it looked like, but…” Dismay swept over me. “Oh.”
Aidan spoke gently. “The private detective who took the photographs, and who, incidentally, is without doubt well known to the Brighton police, was simply doing his job. David paid him, quite legitimately, to provide evidence in a divorce case. What is really between the two people in the photographs is of no interest to the detective, the police, the lawyers, the judge or anyone else. Evidence is the only thing that counts in law.”
“But … even if the photographs enable David to get his divorce, surely they will ruin his reputation too? He is in them, after all, half naked on a bed with a girl!”
Aidan moved a little nearer to me. “Clara, this is how it works. In cases such as these, the girl is condemned as a scarlet woman, but for the man, especially a man like David, the whole thing merely adds to his glamour. It’s a phenomenon of civilized life that you may have heard of. It’s known as the double standard.”
I looked dejectedly at the muddy lawn that spread before us. It reminded me of the fallow fields around Haverth. But thinking of Haverth hurt my heart. “So there is nothing I can do. David will get away with it, and I will be ruined.”
“Not necessarily.” Aidan dropped his cigarette stub and ground it out with his toe. “When I said the divorce case might never come to court, it was because we might be able to stop it. Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve got an idea.”
Aidan’s shoulders looked high and tense. His fingers drummed the bench between us. He was looking at me with his actor’s face – eyes alight, forehead a little puckered, mouth slightly open, as if he were about to kiss the heroine. “You see, the photographs will be sent to David’s wife, who will give them to her lawyer. After that it’ll be months before the case comes up. We’ve got time to do something.”
I was dubious. “Aidan…”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to get your hopes up, then disappoint you. By the way, did I tell you I’ve got a part in a new picture?”
“No, you didn’t. And what about your idea?”
“I’m telling you about it. When I’ve finished this picture, I thinking I might jack acting in and do something else.”
I was surprised. “But you’re really good!” I said truthfully.
“Well, thank you for that.” He smiled one of his I’m-not-really-smiling smiles. “I had no idea you even noticed my acting.”
He was right; I had considered him a nuisance and treated him with impatience. I had taken my cue from David, whose contempt for Aidan was obvious from the first day. Aidan’s behaviour, on and off the set, had automatically irritated me because it irritated David. I had fed my own vanity by assuming Aidan was jealous of David, without bothering to wonder if there might be some other reason for the friction between the two men.
I was embarrassed. Aidan was still the man I knew, with his actorish gestures and affected phrases, who smoked and drank too much, but since I had descended upon his flat he had conducted himself impeccably. “Um … I notice lots of things,” I said weakly.
He put his hands in his pockets and looked at me sheepishly. “You see, I’d rather be a photographer. That’s what I’m really interested in. I like to think I’m pretty good at it.” He smiled thinly. “And David isn’t the only person in the wor
ld who can set up photographs that are not quite what they seem.”
I felt suddenly anxious. “What do you mean? No, I know what you mean. You are going to get photographs of David in a compromising situation with a young girl, aren’t you? But how will that be of any use? What about the double standard?”
“You are quite right. But the photographs I am going to get will not involve David and a girl. They will show him with something else entirely.”
I did not feel any less anxious. “This isn’t going to involve anything fishy, is it?”
“Fishy?” His voice was low, but I heard the anticipation, and, strangely enough, a note of compassion in it. “Clara, listen. Have you ever heard of something called cocaine?”
My voice came out very small. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Thought not.” Aidan stood up suddenly and pulled down the brim of his hat. “Look, can we walk a bit? I’m getting cold.”
We set off in the direction of Park Lane. “Don’t alarm yourself,” he said, “but cocaine is a drug made from the coca tree, found in South America. It’s not used for medicinal purposes, though. People – rich people, as it’s very expensive – use it to make themselves feel good.”
I was not alarmed, but interested. “Like wine and cigarettes?”
“Exactly, except that alcoholic drink and tobacco are legal, and cocaine is illegal. You can be arrested and imprisoned for possession of it, and if you are caught importing or selling it you’re in very deep trouble indeed.”
My interest increased. “Are you telling me that David uses this thing? Cocaine?”
“Yep,” he nodded, “along with the rest of his set.”
“What do they do with it? Drink it? Smoke it?”
“No, it is taken through the nose. They sniff it.”
“And they risk getting caught just to feel good?”
“It’s fashionable.” He gave a small shrug. “It’s what the people David wishes to impress do. And like cigarettes, the more you have the more you want.” He looked at me squarely. “Believe me, Clara, I’d never touch cocaine myself. I much prefer the old cigs, and whisky, of course. But people like Marjorie Cunningham are so dependent on cocaine to keep themselves happy, they cling to David because he knows where to get the stuff.”
A memory rose up, and I gasped. “Oh!” I stopped so suddenly that a man in a top hat bumped into us. He apologized, raised his topper and went on his way while I stared at Aidan, stricken. “That’s why you thought it was funny that I should imagine Marjorie had come to David for a job. She had come to him for cocaine, hadn’t she?”
He let his expression be his answer. I went on standing there, my brain busy. “So you are hoping to photograph David sniffing this stuff?” It was like a script from a film. Trying to control my voice, trying to be as nonchalant as Aidan, I pressed on. “And … you will tell David that you’ll give the photographs to the police unless he destroys the photographs taken in the hotel?”
“Exactly.” Aidan’s eyes had begun to glow a little. He began to walk on. “We’ll catch him unawares. You’ll set up the photograph, and I’ll take it. All you need to do is what you’ve been doing for the last six months. Act.”
I had been cold, but now I was hot. I dragged my fur from around my neck, my face suddenly burning. My legs felt weak, and I sat down where I was, on the steps of a drinking-fountain. Aidan sat down one step lower, so our faces were on the same level. “I can’t do that!” I hissed.
“Why not?” His face had its hungry look. “You’re the obvious person to do it.”
I drew the fox’s body backwards and forwards between my hands, feeling its softness, wishing as ever that I was someone else. That nanny in her olive-green uniform, hand-in-hand with a toddler. The man running to and fro on the grass with a kite string in his hand, watching the kite dance in the sky with more interest than his small son. Any of the stone figures that adorned Marble Arch. “Aidan, you know very well why not. Acting with a script and a director is one thing, but this is real life. It’s deceiving, which isn’t the same thing at all.”
“But David deceived you!”
“Exactly!” I said irrationally. “And if I go anywhere near him, he’ll treat me just like he did in that hotel.” My voice began to waver a little. “I can’t go through a scene like that again. I don’t know David. I don’t know you. I’ll never be able to decide whether anything is fact, ever.” Inexplicably cold again, though the sun was strengthening, I put my fur back on. “Don’t you understand? I’m scared.”
“Clara, if you would just try and understand…”
“I do understand!” Tears smarted behind my eyes. The events of the last twenty-four hours had left me as battered as if it had been me that David had kicked to the ground, not Aidan. “Look, Aidan, I am not a …” – I struggled for the word I wanted – “a puppet, or a doll or something, with no feelings. I can’t turn on David and give him a dose of his own medicine, as if he meant nothing to me. He does mean something to me, as I thought we established last night.”
“Please hear me out, Clara, I beg you…”
I stood up. Park Lane swam before me. I blinked and it recovered its clarity. “No, I won’t. I don’t want to hear any more about this. Thank you for everything, but I am going back to the flat now to pack my case.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Aidan got to his feet. “You don’t know the way back, and anyway you haven’t got a door key.” He took my arm, and as he did so, the first drops of rain began to fall.
When we got back to the flat, the sitting-room was almost dark. Aidan lit the gas lamps on the wall and blew out the match, his eyes on my face. I bustled about, unbuttoning my gloves and unclipping the fox’s tail from its mouth, taking off my hat and patting my hair. “My feet are freezing. Might I have a bath before I go?”
He went on looking at me, the spent match still in his hand. “Clara, you’re not going anywhere. Please, stop this silliness and listen to me, will you?”
“Silliness!” I was incensed. “Why am I being silly because I have refused to be party to pointless revenge? Why can you not admit defeat?”
He patted his pockets for cigarettes, retrieved a crumpled pack and searched it.
My patience broke. “And why must you smoke all the time?”
He found a cigarette and lit it, his eyes still on me. The smoke made a blue stalk in the air. “We all have our vices,” he said steadily. “And in answer to your other question, I cannot admit defeat because what I am proposing is not ‘pointless revenge’. It is an opportunity to do something that should have been done – I should have done – a long time ago.” He took a shaky breath, and his face took on a stubborn, determined look. “Clara, I must tell you that you are not the first to suffer at David Penn’s hands. But if you help me now, hopefully you will be the last.”
Illuminated from behind, Aidan’s features were almost invisible. And it seemed to me in that moment that everything else about him was invisible too. Who was this man? In the months we had worked together on the film, through all the scenes we had rehearsed and filmed, our physical proximity, our shared exhaustion, he had cultivated an air of cynicism, even arrogance, as if everyone else was a child and he an adult. He had behaved as if treating it all as a joke was the only way he could survive. Perhaps it was. His offer of future help, which I had not even understood at the time, remained the only chink in the door he kept so tightly closed.
As I stood there in my stockinged feet, coat and fur over my arm, my anger subsided. “Why do you care so much?” I asked softly. “If I end up being cited in a divorce case and am branded a … what did you call it? … a scarlet woman, then that does not affect you at all. If I do not agree with what you propose, what does that matter to you?”
He went to the window. The curtains were not yet drawn. He looked down to the street, but it was clear that he was not seeing it. After three or four puffs, he began to speak in a sort of distracted murmur, as if he were talking to himself.<
br />
“If I tell you what I know about David, you will understand. Did you know his real name is David Penhaligon?”
I thought of Mr Reynolds, my old schoolmaster, instructing us in English about the British Empire, and my da at home, using his mixture of Welsh and English to tell me about the British government’s attitude to Wales, the Welsh and our ancient language. Cornwall had an ancient language too, and “pen” meant “head” in both of them. I wondered, randomly, if David knew that.
“No, I didn’t.”
“They are a family of criminals,” said Aidan. “His father’s been in prison for years, and his mother went off with someone else. He started in films as a runner, a messenger boy, and because he’s good-looking he got taken up by a rich woman and taught manners. She gave him money to start his company. But then of course he dropped her as soon as he began to be successful.”
I tried to digest what he was saying. “But how do you know all this?”
“Because…” He sat down on the sofa and reached for the ashtray. “She was my mother.”
I was so surprised I could not move. I remained glued to the middle of the green rug, feeling its pile through the soles of my stockings, thinking uncontrollable thoughts about people’s mothers, and my own mother, and betrayal, and the fight between David and Aidan, and the sorrow and shame of ruined reputations. I tried to say something sympathetic, or at least not too crass, but I had no breath to speak.
“I was employed on the first film David was the AD on, about five years ago,” continued Aidan. “He latched on to me, I suppose, because I was better educated and better connected than he was, and he hoped to raise himself up by clinging to my coat-tails. He met my mother because she used to like to come and watch me on set sometimes in those days. He fawned over her, and she was so lonely – my father had died two years before. She was flattered and was forever telling me how kind and wonderful he was. But I never trusted him and he knew it, though he maintained a polite façade. He couldn’t stand the fact that I saw through him. I knew he was an opportunist and a liar, persuading my dear Ma into giving him money while carrying on with God knows how many other women, sniffing cocaine and keeping every champagne producer in France in business.”
101 Pieces of Me Page 11