Distant Music

by Charlotte Bingham

  Oliver took the paper toile from Coco’s hands and put it to one side in order to better command her attention.

  ‘Just for a minute, Coco, consider. Consider what a difference it would, it will, make to your and Holly’s lives.’

  ‘It will make a huge difference, of course it will, a huge and horrible difference. I do not want to be married, Ollie! You have never wanted to be married, the whole thing is the most awful idea, and you know it. We have both always agreed marriage just makes people – well, horrible. It’s like being locked up in a Ford motor car with all the windows up, and I didn’t say that, you did, if you remember, once when we were having lunch together at Ramad. And – and we both agreed it would be terrible for our careers, that once you married that was it, everyone gave up on you. It’s just not on for people like us. We are emotional gypsies.’

  ‘Gypsies get married—’

  Coco stood up, but Oliver pressed down on her shoulders so hard, she finally gave in and sat down again.

  ‘What about Holly? You’re not thinking of Holly, Coco.’

  ‘I am thinking of Holly. She would hate having a man who was pretending to be my husband around the place, really she would.’

  ‘Holly might need a father–husband person in her life.’

  ‘Having a baby, being a mother, is different.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘They are not – marriage.’

  ‘Having a baby is pretty serious, Coco.’

  ‘If I had a husband as well as a baby—’ Coco looked at Oliver, frowning.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, quite honestly I think I would feel like jumping in the Thames, Ollie, I would really.’

  ‘Well, all right, let’s try again. Just tell me what possible difference a silly little bit of paper will make to us? After all, we’re old friends. We have known each other since we were children. There is nothing new to learn about each other, after all, is there?’ Oliver pointed a triumphant finger down at Coco, scoring a point as he well knew. ‘Besides, I can trust you, Coco, I can trust you to treat the whole thing as a joke, or a business arrangement, whatever you will, whereas if I marry some actress I don’t know, well it won’t be the same at all, will it? I mean, will it? I mean they could split on me to the Kass Organisation, they could go to the press, or they could divorce me and demand alimony, whereas I know that I really can trust you, don’t I? Please, please, for the sake of world sales, marry me.’

  ‘I don’t see why this stupid man Kass has to have his star married. Why? I mean to say?’

  ‘I told you, his sales people have got this thing that whoever plays Jesus the Messiah has to be whiter than white, and all that. By marrying me off before filming starts he reckons I will keep out of trouble, and besides, there will be the publicity – all good for the film, and all that. I mean you can see, from his point of view, just what he means, you can really, at least I can. Worldwide sales would be affected by the Messiah going off for flings in wild foreign places, or being found drunk outside night clubs, you know. I mean I can understand that.’

  ‘You can understand it, because you desperately want the part. It will make you even more famous. Or rather it will make you famous rather than infamous, which is what you are rapidly becoming. That is why you want to jump to and do what Kass wants, and start pretending to be a good boy.’

  ‘Oh please, Coco, it is only a little thing, really it is. Just a quick visit to Wandsworth reggie office and out again, no fuss, just the press, and that is that. Besides, you owe me, you know you do. You always said that you would do anything to repay me for finding the nursing home where you had Holly, you did say that.’

  ‘Did I? I suppose I did.’ There was a small silence as Coco remembered just how kind the nuns had been. The days and weeks that she had spent lying in bed waiting for Holly to grow had been lightened by their goodness, and it was true it had been due to Oliver, completely due to Oliver. ‘Well, I am not getting married in a register office, that is one thing. They are so depressing.’

  Oliver paled. ‘You mean you want to get married in a church?’

  ‘Yes, if I am to be married, it has to be in church. I will not go to a register office, Oliver. I hate those places. I would rather be shot.’

  ‘But getting married in church is very serious, Coco, and I am a left-footer, you know that. Not a good left-footer, I will agree, but too much of one to go into a church and take vows and not mean it, and all that.’

  ‘Take it or leave it, Ollie, I am not dressing up to go to a register office mutter parlour.’

  ‘No, I am sorry, I couldn’t do that, Coco. I couldn’t marry in church just for a lark and – and because I want a part. I don’t mind a register office, but not a church.’

  ‘You had better ask the Kass Organisation, hadn’t you, Oliver?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘They may insist that you marry in church, and then what?’

  Oliver’s feelings of propriety were now really under fire. It was one thing to marry Coco in a register office, but to go down the aisle, all proper, as it were, seemed just too sacrilegious for words.

  ‘I don’t think they will mind, Coco, just so long as I tie the knot with someone, put paid to the gossip-column tittle-tattle about all my affairs, and all that.’

  Oliver stared at Coco, realising of a sudden that if they were talking like this, Coco must have given in to the idea of a marriage of convenience with him.

  ‘So, whatever happens, you will marry me?’

  He must have been right because Coco replied, almost absently, ‘Oh, very well, but in name only, Ollie, nothing more.’

  ‘And whatever else would it be, Coco? I have never wanted to get married, and nor have you. This is simply a business thing, you know that, just a business arrangement.’

  ‘I will not go and live with you, and if you have to live here with us for a while as cover, you will have to behave yourself. And I don’t want you living here with some girl or other, or anything like that. I don’t want you embarrassing Holly, do you understand?’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  Oliver gave a great sigh of relief. He would agree to anything at that moment, and anyway, in due course, after the film was over, and Oliver was free of the Kass Organisation, they could just get quietly divorced.

  ‘And you are not to keep arriving back here drunk. If you are the worse for wear you are to book yourself into an hotel and sober up there, and that goes for anything else, for that matter. And I will probably want that in writing, do you hear?’

  Oliver nodded happily. He did not dare tell Coco that he had already signed a contract with the Kass Organisation which included a clause stipulating that he would tie the knot before the start of filming.

  ‘I’ll agree to anything you ask, Coco, really I will. I am just so grateful to you.’

  ‘I should think so too.’ Coco gave a sharp nod and turned back to her sewing machine.

  ‘I will arrange everything tomorrow – straight away, get it over and done with, once and for all.’

  ‘Yes, you can do all the arrangements. I want nothing to do with anything. And I don’t want any publicity either, thank you. And you can call the Kass Organisation – you can tell the Kass Organisation that they can Kass off – ha, ha! No. They can have their marriage, but no photographs, no press. Our wedding must be completely private. I must keep Holly out of the papers. I don’t want her being teased when she goes to nursery school, or anything. People have long memories.’

  What Coco did not want to admit to Oliver was that she was not actually thinking about Holly and her nursery school at that moment, but about Nanny Ali. She was worrying that a precipitous wedding might appeal as odd to those at ‘the palace’, where Coco was already supposed to be married.

  Whatever happened she did not want anything endangering her new commissions for the Prince’s children. Oliver and his demands were just a nuisance, but Coco’s commission for Prince Ali’s children
would give her, and Holly, a much needed basis upon which Coco could build for the future, something positive, which was more than the sporadic designing offers that she received from theatrical managements could guarantee her at that moment.

  Just then the telephone rang.

  Coco picked it up, seating herself on the tall kitchen stool as she did so. It was someone calling from Australia, person to person.

  ‘I am afraid Coco Hampton’s not here at present. Could you call back in an hour?’ Coco told the operator, putting on a different voice, and then she quickly put the phone down, and sighed. She could not believe that she had just agreed to marry Oliver. It was a nightmare.

  ‘Anything the matter, Coco?’ Oliver looked suddenly concerned.

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elsie had put on weight. It was inevitable. All that time spent in Italy eating pasta and enjoying long film lunches in the shade. Portly looked at her with some affection. The weight she had put on actually suited her. It gave her a more mature look, although she was even now moaning about the need to lose it.

  ‘Actually, Elsie, you have never looked better. Being away from everyone and everything has benefited you.’

  ‘Benefited me, really, has it, Portly? Really, just listen to you, you’re so avuncular! I shall start calling you Uncle Porters from now on.’

  ‘No, you shan’t. I am not your uncle and never will be. And God forbid that I should be landed with such a naughty niece.’

  Portly placed a plate of his best chicken pie in front of Elsie, and then he stood back and surveyed the rest of the table, making sure that she had everything she might need. Salts and peppers, butter for her potatoes, wine in her glass.

  ‘You are not to start slimming today,’ he warned. ‘I have spent hours making this pie and I expect you to do more than eat it, I expect you to enjoy it.’

  Elsie smiled. She had a good smile that reflected in her large eyes, but not as good as Oliver’s, which they both knew was the smile of the century. Obedient to Porter’s command, because she dared not be anything else, she picked up her knife and fork, and started eating. As she did so, she found herself suffused with a melancholy that was as pervasive and powerful as any she had ever felt. As Portly bustled about serving fresh peas and tiny early potatoes before finally sitting down opposite her, the very familiarity of his concern, his all-embracing kindness took her back to the dear days of their life in Tadcaster. Portly cooking, Oliver spouting some rubbish or another, Elsie deeply concerned with something as world-shattering as the colour of a new lipstick, or the length of a new skirt. She remembered the early mornings which were filled with nothing more important than the purchase of a fresh, warm loaf from the baker, the early afternoons that were filled with nothing of greater relevance than the purchase of a perfect pen, or a length of ribbon, or an old-fashioned button. She remembered how much Oliver had loved her, endlessly and seamlessly, how they had sometimes never stirred from their shared room until lunchtime, and how Portly had absented himself until it was time to cook, when he always seemed to prepare the perfect meal for any particular moment or occasion. Late lunches, early suppers, informal teas, midnight feasts, Portly always seemed to have the ideal menu waiting for them all.

  ‘This is a bit like Tadcaster, isn’t it? Except now we are all so successful, it’s not a bit like it, is it?’

  Portly did not want to think about Tadcaster. While he had, at the time, been ecstatic to be invited to live with Elsie and Oliver, it had nevertheless been an uneasy time for him, a halfway house between the utter failure that he had experienced after being cleaned out by Donald Bourton, and the prospect of success to come.

  ‘How do you think the asparagus goes with the chicken? It’s the first time I have done it like that.’

  ‘It is perfect, Porters old thing, perfectly perfect. But what I want to know is, now we are all successful, do you think we are happier than we were? I mean – before? Do you think we are all happier? We are a tiny bit famous too, aren’t we? Not very, but just a bit?’

  Elsie knew that Portly would understand exactly what she meant.

  ‘I don’t think we are particularly successful yet, Elsie. Soon we may be, but we have, as yet, to confirm our position in the field, as the saying goes.’

  ‘I have more money in the bank than I ever dreamed of, really I have. It’s actually burning a hole in my pocket.’

  ‘Very possibly, but you mustn’t let it burn a hole, because you are going to need that money, you know. For the bad times ahead, for the times when you change categories, when something is a flop, when you are ill, for those times. You will need that money more than you will be able to credit it.’

  ‘I never think of tomorrow.’

  ‘No, nor should you have to. That is why I am here, to look after your money for you, Elsie, take care of it for that inevitable rainy day.’ Portly looked very serious as Elsie realised the import of what he was saying to her.

  ‘You are going to look after my money for me?’ For the first time uncertainty crept into Elsie’s voice, and she stared at Portly, trying not to look panicked.

  ‘Yes, I would suggest that I do. I would like to look after your money for you, and make sure that the future is quite safe for you, so that you need not give it another thought. Keep your thoughts for the scripts I send you, and let me look after your doh ray me.’

  Alarm bells started to sound in Elsie’s head. Of a sudden the memory of all the dust-ups over the sinking of Cosgrove and Bourton came back to her, together with Dottie’s voice saying, over and over again, ‘Never, ever leave your money with your agent or your accountant. Don’t matter if they tell you they’re keeping it for tax, or keeping it for a rainy day, always insist that it goes straight to your bank, and I don’t mean that it must go to your bank today – I mean it must go to your bank yesterday.’

  ‘I, er – I, er, I’m not sure that I want to bother you with my money, Porters, darling, really I don’t.’

  ‘I am, Elsie. I know you actresses. Once back in London – bang – it will all go, just like that. Much better for me to manage your money for you, invest it soundly, give you a dress allowance, all that kind of thing, make sure that you have a nest egg for a future which might one day not be quite so roseate. I am doing that for all my actors and actresses, and they all see the sense in it.’

  Portly did not usually mention other actresses in front of Elsie, but of course now that he had she became distracted, both curious and jealous, all at the same time.

  ‘How’s Juliet Tatami doing?’

  Juliet Tatami was currently a very fashionable musical star. Half Oriental, half English, she was both beautiful and talented, and now moving into legitimate theatre, as they both knew – although Elsie was pretending not to know.

  ‘Juliet is about to be signed up for a television series, starring opposite George Ludlum.’

  ‘Oh, George – he was on The Roman Legion with me last year. Send him my love, won’t you?’

  They both knew that Ludlum and Elsie had enjoyed a brief and completely satisfactory affair. Refugees from boredom on the film set, they had gone everywhere together, and parted a few weeks later with, as the song went, no regrets.

  ‘George has signed with the agency, did you know that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Goodness, Portly, you are fashionable now.’

  ‘Goodness has nothing to do with it, Elsie, and you know it.’

  A small silence followed, and then Elsie, who had been deliciously seduced as always by the beauty and lightness of Portly’s cooking, asked him, ‘Do you think Juliet Tatami has sex appeal, Portly?’

  ‘As far as producers and directors are concerned? Yes, quite definitely. As far as I am concerned, I really would not like to say. I represent her, she is a good actress, a nice person, that is all I know, really.’

  ‘Now you’re being diplomatic.’

  ‘What else would you have me be?’

  ‘Anything
but that. Anything but safe.’

  Elsie was now feeling suspicious of Portly and his relationship with Miss Tatami.

  ‘If I say she has no sex appeal then you are going to ask yourself, “What kind of agent is this? And if he says that about Juliet Tatami what does he say about Elsie Lancaster?” If I say she has bags of sex appeal, you are going to say to yourself, “He is favouring Juliet Tatami more than me”, so either way, I am doomed.’

  Elsie laughed. They both knew that Portly was right, and could not be much righter. Whatever he said in answer to a demand from Elsie to rate another actress’s appeal would be the wrong answer. It was just a fact. Better by far to talk about herself and revel in eating the perfectly delicious-looking queen of puddings that Portly was now placing in front of her.

  ‘I am never going to lose weight with you as my agent.’

  More laughter, and lunch continued in much the same way as it had used to do in the days gone by in Tadcaster, the mood happy and relaxed, each person knowing each other completely, faults and virtues alike, yet trusting and loving each other as friends, sharing common interests and dislikes, able to see each other’s point of view.

  It was only later, when she had gone back to her newly rented flat with a large bundle of television scripts under her arm, that Elsie remembered that Portly had taken charge of her money, and that, for some reason she could not name, she had allowed him to do so.

  Once she reached home, Elsie tried to push away Dottie’s awful warnings about such matters, the fund of terrible stories that she had always related to anyone and everyone who would listen. About how so-and-so had gone to Broadway, leaving precious tax money with his agent, only to return and find it gone. About how a certain famous actress had left all her savings in the agency account only for the agent to go bankrupt. All Dottie’s stories were true. Elsie knew this, she had always known it. Dottie might be the nearest thing to Medusa on a bad day, but she never, ever lied about such things, and Elsie knew that she would ignore her at her peril.

  She put her head in her hands. To have to tell Portly of all people that she did not want him to hold on to her money was such a terrible prospect, it was almost inconceivable. It would be tantamount to telling him that she did not trust him. She opened the first of the television scripts that he had given her, and frowned. One glance at even the layout told her that they looked very different from a play script; so much so that just at first it did not seem as if what the actors did or said really counted for much. Gradually her eyes grew accustomed to the appearance of these very different scripts, and equally gradually the fascination of the potential of live television started to grow on her.