by Dirk Bogarde
‘Here’s the key to Jericho. Want it? Take charge of it for me? It might just get pinched in Nice … in the parking or wherever. Lots of villains there. Mafia. Don’t want to risk that, do we?’
He straightened up, then a very small smile broke at the corners of his mouth. He took the key and held it in his fist. ‘I’m only ten, on the second. Not twenty-one! And I’ve got the key of the door.’ He laughed suddenly, easily, joyfully.
‘Cor, what presumption! So you have. And I forgot to say anything about your birthday supper to the Theobalds. Mention it, will you? I might forget again. Just tell them the second, informal, at the Maison Blanche.’
‘But that’s a month away! Ages.’
‘I know. But they’re pretty busy, so get in quickly, then they can’t very well refuse. I’ll do it formally, but in case I forget. You know? Do that?’
He stood there by the lichened figure, polishing the key slowly on his sleeve.
‘You hear me?’
He nodded, looked up, smiled, waved the key.
‘Now belt off to your school-room. Do a bit of work. I am paying good francs for these lessons.’
‘We’re not going to do any lessons. We’re all going to Fréjus to the Safari Park. The giraffes and hippos. You’re not supposed to know.’
‘Then I don’t. Tell Arthur I’ll be here at five to collect you. All right? Five.’
I didn’t wait for him to reply, pulled out of the shade of the bay trees and slowly began to bounce and crunch over the hard-packed ruts of the track to the lane. Clever old Arthur! Of course he wouldn’t try to shove Contes et légendes down the throat of a child who had just discovered his future to be in question and his very existence in jeopardy. Giraffes and hippos. Of course!
I watched him through the rear window, saw him turn away and run back to the little house unaware that the key which he held triumphantly above his head had not only opened the door to his probable future (or the start of it at any rate), but that it would also be responsible for the overturning of a number of well-ordered apple-carts presently awaiting my arrival in Nice.
I was absolutely determined to do as much damage in the marketplace as I possibly could during the progress of the day.
Chapter 4
She was sitting at a corner banquette, a flute of champagne and a bowl of pistachio nuts on the table before her. She hadn’t changed at all, and after only a six- or seven-week separation there was no reason to suppose that she would, except she was now very brown, trimmer somehow, her hair piled high, fixed on top with a wide black velvet bow. Guerlain scent, careful make-up, silk shirt, pearl ear-rings, good shoes. The Drab of Parsons Green, as she had called herself on occasion, had fled. Helen was back to the woman she had been before we married. She was not, I could easily see now and much, much too late, the marrying kind. Somebody’s expensive mistress was her line, to hell with domestic bliss.
I ordered a flute, accepted her slightly cool kiss on both cheeks and sat beside her. She lit a cigarette, waved a thin tendril of smoke under my nose. Playfully.
‘Started again. You mind?’
‘Not a bit, of course not.’
‘It doesn’t drive you mad? You smoked so much. Three packs, was it?’
‘About. You look really splendid. Work suits you.’
She raised her flute, took a sip, set it back on the table, grinned at me. ‘It suits me fine. It all started to come back to me. At first I was shit scared that I’d lost it all, lost my touch. You know? But not a bit. Everyone was very patient and kind and Eric was amazingly encouraging and I just swam in again. Terrific!’
‘Great. Good. I’m really glad. And have you finished? I mean in Marbella.’
‘The recce, yes. The shoot won’t be until October. Cooler and the light is kinder. And you? You look terrific, if I may be so bold, I mean you look seriously glam! Brown, lean, boyish …’ She laughed, smothered it with a ringed hand. ‘Perhaps we got away from the London grind just in the nick? What do you think? And now you say you’ll stay here? Amazing!’
‘I think so. I agree, I think we did get away. In the nick. It was a lucky moment when that key fell on the doormat that morning. Very lucky indeed. For us both.’
She took up her glass, serious eyes, both hands to the flute, red-tipped tendrils curling. ‘Was it all ghastly? Finding the “ewe lamb” and all that? Awful, I suppose.’
And so I told her. Carefully edited, giving her a fairly distorted view, quite deliberately, of James’s life, wife and times. But when I had finished, up to and including the trip to the clinic but excluding the true diagnosis, she looked very correctly grave, flicked her cigarette into the ashtray, then apparently decided to stub it out.
‘A funeral? I suppose so. You went, of course, good old loyal you. His wife? Was she destroyed? Suppose so … Of course, I never knew him, but I suppose, being so much younger than you, he was really very young. It seems so much more terrible to die young.’
‘It is. There was a cremation, but she didn’t attend. I collected his ashes and got rid of them.’
‘Rid of them? You didn’t bury them? Graveyard, flowers, all that stuff? Rid of them?’
‘Chucked them into the sea. Scattered them. He’s quite gone now.’
For a moment she looked at me in calm surprise, then she shook her head and laughed gently. ‘Honestly, you Caldi-cotts. You are a rum bunch. Chucking your little brother’s ashes into the sea. Honestly! You really are weird. I see now where Giles gets his moods from. You know, William, I don’t go along with the pneumonia bit. It was something else, wasn’t it? Only you don’t want to say? Right?’
‘Viral pneumonia on the death certificate. You can browse through the papers with the Vice-Consul. Here, in Nice.’ I took a sip of my wine. ‘A most caring chap.’
‘I feel certain he is.’ She fixed an ear-ring. ‘How is Giles anyway? I told you Annie is in fine form? My mother is buying her a pony? Madness of course, as I said, but she’s given up the ballet idea and now wants us to use her proper name, Annicka. Longs to be a show-jumper; first a groom, get trained properly, then she’s all set for Hickstead! God! And my surly son? At a tutor? Very posh, and not before time either.’
She had obviously decided to give up pursuing the cause of James’s death, using her common sense instead, so now we were moving towards family matters which she could more easily comprehend. She had never met any of my family. They had all died before we married, except, of course, James. So now that we had got over the obligatory, and polite, preliminaries, we must consider the hurdles of our own life. It was littered with them as far as I could see. A veritable Hickstead indeed. Or, I wondered vaguely, Aintree?
I briefly told her how well Giles had settled down, was doing with French, that he had gone through all his shirts and toothpaste, and then she finished her wine and said briskly not to worry about that, Mummy was back for the time being, and that she’d take care of shirts and things. She was glad that she had packed him enough to come out with, and when was I planning to return to England now that my ‘mission’ had been accomplished? I surely had no reason to stay on, had I? We simply had to come to terms with putting Simla Road on the market, and getting things into store, or whatever I wanted to do with the stuff. We had to move pretty quickly because the Festival started on the 26th of June, and that was not so far ahead.
‘What festival?’ I finished my wine and set down my glass.
‘The Television Advertising Festival. It’s always in June, and VideoEuropa, that’s Eric’s company, is a strong contender for the Golden Camera this year. It’s a huge booster for whoever wins.’
‘I am sure it is. But what has that to do with you? I mean directly? And with Simla Road and all the rest of it? Why the rush?’
‘Well … Oh, don’t be silly, William. I want to be there. Be with the company. You don’t think I’d pull out on him, do you?’
‘You don’t seem to mind pulling out, as you call it, on me? Who’s been at the house whi
le you’ve been away? It hasn’t been absolutely empty all this time?’
‘Two weeks! And no it hasn’t! Are you mad? I told you time and again. Mrs Nicholls goes in every day and Maureen Cornwall and Chris have the key and keep an eye on the place, and anyway it’s like a bloody fortress! Fort Knox!’ She felt about for her bag on the banquette, asked me to get the bill, and stood up briskly. She had brought this move to an end.
Walking through the marble pillars and glittering doors, she said, quite suddenly, ‘We’ll go up to Eric’s suite. It’s no use trying to discuss things with you in a restaurant. You are sliding into one of your stubborn moods, I can tell.’
She went over to the desk and asked for a key. By number. I went with her in silence to the lifts, up to the third floor.
Eric Rhys-Evans’s suite was very splendid. A sea view naturally, palms, yachts, sea, a mass of flowers, tuberoses, malmaisons, and spiky birds of paradise everywhere. The room was heavy with sickly scent.
Helen moved swiftly to close a door, but not before I saw a pair of her evening shoes spilled by the leg of a gilded chair. ‘Ring for room service and get a menu? I’ll fix the drinks.’
There was wine in a bucket. Ice clattering and sliding, she struggled for a moment, and I let her, with the cold bottle, then she thrust it at me to open, while she arranged two glasses.
‘Of course I didn’t leave the house empty. You knew that. You really are bloody sometimes! You knew I was going to Eric, that I was giving everything over to you, house, furniture, stuff. You knew!’
‘Yes. I know that. We agreed all that a long time ago. Just seems rather a lot to do, packing up, selling houses, sorting ourselves out, all before some bloody Festival in a couple of weeks’ time.’
Then room service answered and I asked for the menu.
‘Certainly, Monsieur Reeze-Evans, right away,’ the voice said.
‘Is this your chum’s permanent squat? The Negresco?’
‘No, it is not. He has to give a dinner tonight for the American side of VideoEuropa, VideoUS. And wives. It’s easier here than at the house. They know him here and take care of everything.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I don’t know why it’s “obviously”, but I can detect the snarl. Your dry wit.’
‘I really didn’t mean it to be a snarl. Sorry.’ I poured the wine carefully because she had shaken it up in her struggle to open it and it was mostly foam. ‘Krug!’ I said in a faux-reverent voice which she apparently accepted as quite normal. ‘Mr Rhys-Evans must be very rich.’
‘He is. Very. And I enjoy that.’ She took her glass and went over to the open windows, leant against them, the light breeze billowing the thin net curtains. ‘I know you hate him. Hate the idea of him. But he just called one evening when you were away. Just after you left. I’d met him quite by surprise one evening at the Cornwalls’. A drink before dinner. He asked what I was doing, that’s all.’
‘And you told him, of course?’ I had settled into the twin of the gilded chair in the bedroom. Everything was Louis Quelquechose and faux-Lalique in the suite, all very sparkling. She turned and came back into the room, arms folded, the flute in her hand, her brow slightly furrowed with, I presumed, anxiety. Or else irritation? Difficult to tell at this moment.
‘Yes. I told him. I said we were … well, separating … that I would need a job. Something like that. A joke really.’
‘Which? The separating or the job?’
‘The job. The separating has never been a joke. I have meant that ever since that god-awful discussion we had in March; the “clearing of the air”, as you so succinctly put it.’
‘And he had a job for you up his sleeve? Good timing.’
She sat down opposite me just as room service arrived with two large cards and the wine-list bound in red leather. He bowed and handed her a menu.
‘Bonjour, Madame Reeze-Evans,’ and turning to me with a faint nod handed me one as well. I asked him to give us quarter of an hour and he left huffily in a swift little patter of feet.
‘Taken the vows already, I gather?’
‘I’ve never seen that idiot before in my life. He just assumed that you were Mr Evans. William, I am going to be absolutely honest with you. I am determined to make this second chance of a job – of a life, if you like – work. Eric thinks I can make it, I know I can. I love it all, I can manage it. At the very start I thought I might have been too old, they’d want someone younger. But I fought that, and I’ve won. And I am going to go on winning. All I need is a bit of extra luck. Just a teensy-weensy bit. You agreed, as you must remember, that we both wanted to separate, that it would be by mutual consent, no ugliness, you said, just “pack it in”, I believe was your exact expression, and I agreed. We have had fourteen years together. Some of it was great. Some of it has been absolutely dreadful and I want out before I am too old to start again. Is that so wrong?’
‘No, it’s not at all wrong. It’s just that things, since we made those arrangements, have altered just a “teensey ween-sey” bit. In – what is it? – six, seven weeks, say two months, we have both managed to do something rather unexpected.’
She got up and refilled her glass, turned towards me holding the Krug bottle by its body. ‘Unexpected? What do you mean, William? Be simple.’
‘Well, simply put, we have both of us met someone else. We didn’t expect that to happen then, did we?’
She poured wine into my offered glass, settled it back into the ice-bucket. ‘Someone else? You mean, you have? Here?’
‘Yes. I have. Here. That was not on the agenda, was it?’
‘I don’t think I really understand you.’
‘Well, you found, or perhaps you refound, Mr Rhys-Evans, which is most fortunate for you, and I have met someone too. “Refound”, you could also say.’
‘Oh William! William. I’m amazed, but I’m really delighted! I mean it’s quite wonderful for you.’ She obviously was pleased, the furrows had gone, her smile was kind, warm, relieved. There could be no problem now about a speedy, mutually agreed divorce in her mind. Her chance of hooking Mr Rhys-Evans seemed more and more likely. ‘It is so super for you! I really am glad. Is she younger than you? Must be. Oh, super!’
‘Younger. And not a she.’
For a moment, just as she was about to sit, the menu in her hand, she froze.
‘Not a she?’
‘It’s a boy. I’m afraid.’
She sat suddenly, spilled her wine. ‘A boy!’
‘A boy. Yes.’
She put the menu on the floor at her feet. ‘William! Oh God. Well, I don’t know what to say, really. I really don’t. But well, if it’s something which will make you happy. You have – you have thought about it? What it will mean to all your friends? To the children? William?’
I nodded kindly. ‘I have thought about it. Yes. I know what it’ll mean. What I will have to give up. Change my whole life-style around. People will talk. It was completely unexpected, I never thought for one moment that I was the kind of man who could even remotely accept a situation like this, it just suddenly exploded and – you must know how it is, I was lost. I think I’m quite besotted. It’s frightful.’
‘Oh, William. It is, well, it’s a bit amazing. I don’t quite know what to say.’ She looked away helplessly. ‘But I hope I’m saying the right thing … I just pray that it’ll be, for you, huge happiness. I mean this is seriously important. At your age, it is such a ghastly risk.’
‘I know. I know. A dreadful risk. Don’t think I haven’t spent hours worrying about it. After all, as you very well know, I’m over forty – well over forty – and I’m not really in the habit of, well… you know?’
Her warmth was suddenly radiating like an electric fire, her smile generous and caring, a Botticelli Madonna. She put a hand on my arm sweetly.
‘I have to be happy for you. I have to be. Simply have to be. You said that, well, like Eric and me, you had refound this person. Refound?’
‘Yes. Amaz
ing. I’ve known him for years. Ten almost, to be exact.’
‘Ten!’ Her good green eyes were wide with surprise. ‘Ten! And you never said?’
‘I never knew. Was quite unaware.’
‘Oh, my dear. How extraordinary. Then is it anyone I … anyone I would know?’
‘Oh yes. Very well. Giles,’ I said, as the door opened and the pattering waiter asked if we were ready to order.
‘A cruel and witless thing to do! Honest to God. Winding me up. You really are bloody, I feel a complete idiot and that delights you, I know.’
‘Not in the least! Helen, dear, you simply misunderstood. I haven’t lied or been underhand, I didn’t try to make you feel a “complete idiot”, not at all. I just told you exactly what had happened, how I felt, that’s all. I admit it is a surprise. It took me by surprise. Totally. I didn’t want Giles hanging around here while I was trying to discover what had happened to James. God knows I didn’t. The last thing. And I’ll admit, freely and with full apology far too late, that I realize now that I was a bloody awful father to them both.’
‘Oh great! At last! Now we grovel.’
‘I’m not grovelling, my dear, simply stating facts, I was too busy with my work, flogging the books, with trying to make a secure place for us all to live, to pay for school fees, mortgages, food and clothes – all that junk. Stuff I had never even considered before you and I met. I was a late developer, a happy bachelor, and I didn’t honestly know the rules of the game. For that I am deeply contrite. I am going to do my very best now to make up for past failure. Okay? Will you accept that? Remember, you sent him out to me. By Air France. To be collected.’
She prodded her already congealing half of an omelette, pushed it to the side of her plate, reached for the cheese board. ‘Not much I can say, is there? It’s a great moment to suddenly see the light. You hardly knew the children. Oh, a couple of ghastly holidays in some god-awful barns in France, the obligatory picnics on bitter beaches. You were as much fun to them as an abscess.’