‘Well? What has that to do with me?’
‘I’m afraid this is rather difficult.’ There was real distress in his voice now. ‘Scrutiny of the books has shown that your brother-in-law has been — well, shall we say he’s displayed less probity over money affairs than he should have done. And when trouble started over what they were finding, Monty felt the need of legal advice and your sister Bessie sent him to me. That’s why I’m involved.’
‘Why should Monty want advice? He’s an accountant — I thought he understood all that was necessary about money —’
‘About money, yes. About embezzlement, no.’
‘Embezzlement? I don’t understand.’
‘For some years your brother-in-law has been steadily taking money out of the business. Money that should by rights have been shared with his partner, your sister Fanny. Now Monty wants his inheritance and he wants all of it. And believing now that his father has been — well, it has to be said — robbing his mother — well, he needed legal help. He may go to court —’
‘Monty’s taking his father to court?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Surely he can’t be. Not his own father —’
‘Well, embezzlement is embezzlement. Your brother-in-law has been systematically using money that by rights was your sister’s. For years, I suppose. I can understand Monty’s anger —’
‘Maybe — but to take it to court, to make a great public thing out of it? It’s not as though Monty’s short of money, anyway. He’s doing well enough — or so I thought.’
‘He says there’s a principle involved.’
‘I’ll bet he does. How expensive is the principle?’
‘It runs to about five thousand pounds. It’s a lot of money, Lexie. A lot.’
‘Well, I suppose it is, but all the same — Monty taking his father to court.’ She tried to imagine the scene. Dave in the dock? Monty in the witness box? How did it happen when sons sued fathers? She looked up, frowning a little. ‘It’s awful, all of it. But what affair is it of mine? Apart from it being my brother-in-law and nephew, I mean —’
He coughed, a dry little sound that rattled in the quiet room, and he suddenly seemed to change, to become very much a legal personage, not the man she had known for so long but a symbol of something cold and weighty that had nothing to do with individual personalities.
‘It seems that some of the money embezzled he spent on you. He kept records and they’ve been turned over to me. It appears he paid your rent over a considerable period of time and also for some of the furnishings here.’ His voice was dry and expressionless and he didn’t look at her as he spoke.
She was silent for a long time and then she said uncertainly, ‘Well? He was my brother-in-law, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, I said that. That this could have been a family concern, a natural wish to help a young relative. But Monty says —’ He hesitated.
‘Well, what does he say?’ She lifted her chin at him, for there was a note of distaste in his voice that was very clear.
‘Monty says that if it had been simply a family concern his mother would have been involved. The fact that Dave kept it secret suggests that — suggests that there was more to it than that.’
‘Oh, my God,’ she said and then again more loudly. ‘Oh, my God. That’s horrible — that Monty —’
‘I agree with you,’ Max said, and she stared at him. ‘I know I shouldn’t feel like that about a client, and that’s why I’m not taking the case any further. It’s a nasty one, and I want no part of it. I’ve told Bessie I can’t handle it, and now I’m telling you. But I wanted to warn you. The man he’s gone to — he’ll make the most he can out of it. He likes sordid cases like this — they make him a lot of money — and the yellow press know his cases tend to be interesting, in their terms. I’m very much afraid there’s likely to be a lot of drama when it comes to court. A good deal of publicity. And I must tell you that Monty has no qualms at all about making sure that you’re called as a witness. There’ll be a subpoena.’
Again there was silence between them and she said in a tight little voice. ‘So what can I do?’
‘Be honest, I think,’ he said. ‘Tell them the truth. I have to ask you, Lexie, because others will. Did you and Dave — were you lovers?’
‘Lovers?’ she said and laughed. ‘Oh, my God, what a word! Lovers! It makes me sick, do you know that? Sick —’ She began to laugh louder. It was a shrill giggle at first, and then as the enormity of the question swept over her it became more noisy and more uncontrolled until she wasn’t laughing any more, but crying, and he was beside her, kneeling on the carpet at her feet holding her close against his shoulder.
‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Hush, Lexie. It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s just me, no need to distress yourself, it’s all right —’ He rocked her gently and crooned into her ear until the tears slowly eased and she was able to control her voice again.
‘It was never like that,’ she said. ‘Truly it wasn’t. It was just that — oh, God, however I explain it it’s going to sound awful.’
‘Tell me, anyway.’
‘You’ll hate me if I do. I hate myself,’ she said and put her hands over her face. ‘Because we weren’t lovers, truly we weren’t. But he did, just once, when I was unhappy and frightened — he did just once —’
‘And you’re going to tell me about it,’ he said, sitting back on his heels but still holding both her hands in his. ‘You’ll feel better once you do. So start at the beginning and tell me all of it.’
22
In some ways it was worse than she had feared, but in others it was better. The bad part was waiting for the axe to fall. It took some weeks for the case to come to court, even though Monty and his eager little ferret of a new lawyer did all they could to rush it through. Not knowing what he might do when he got to court and what he might say, and above all whether she might be called as a witness, was agony for Lexie.
But the good part was the effect this new crisis in her life had had on her feelings. It was Max who had made her see that she had been unnecessarily angry with herself over her fight with Bessie, and unnecessarily cruel; that keeping herself aloof hadn’t helped, indeed had made her feel worse; and it had been Max who had organized matters so that the sisters could meet again and pick up the threads of their relationship without too much embarrassment.
He had taken them both out to dinner at the Trocadero and there, in that fashionable, glittering public place, full of chatter and jazz and the clink of cocktail glasses, where recriminations and tears and hugs of remorse would have been more embarrassing than the original situation, they were able to talk of ordinary everyday things as though there had never been an argument at all, and so re-create their private links. Lexie had sat there between Max and Bessie and felt again the peace of being with people she needed and could trust, and she was grateful.
She tried to say as much as the evening wore on, but the words were halting and confused.
‘I’m sorry I get so prickly, Bessie,’ she began. ‘I didn’t mean to, but then someone says something that irritates me, and it all gets mixed up in my head, and I think they hate me so I hate them and —’
‘Hush,’ Bessie said, ducking her head to look into her dish of ice cream. ‘It’s all over. Forgotten. Let’s not talk of old bad things. Just better ones. Tell me, how’s the new act coming on? Did he like it, when you showed it to him, this C.B. man?’
‘Yes, he liked it,’ she said and bit her lip. She wanted badly to talk, wanted to say all the things that were inside her, wanted Bessie to know that she hadn’t meant to be so hard and cruel, and wanted her to know, too, that it wasn’t all her own badness; that there was a need in her, a feeling that was almost a pain that came when she thought about her dancing and about the act — but Bessie didn’t want to talk, so that was that.
It worried her too that Max also didn’t want to talk about the things she had told him. He had stayed there beside her as she’d explained, as
best she could, what had happened that evening at Manor House, had tried to make him sec how angry she had been, how important it had seemed to make Dave give something back for what he had taken from her. Max had crouched there, his face unreadable in the darkness, saying nothing until at last she had stopped talking and had sat curled in her armchair, exhausted but with a curious sense of relief and freedom inside her, waiting for his reaction.
All he had done was touch her hand and say, ‘That’s all right then. I know now. I’ll know what to do if it comes up in court. I’ll do my best to stop it, but at least I know the strength of it now. Thank you for trusting me with the truth, Lexie. It’s always best.’
‘Do you hate me for it?’ she’d said then, peering up at him, for he had got to his feet and was looking over her head, out of the window into the dark street.
‘Hate you? Why on earth should I hate you?’ he’d said, and for a moment she’d felt his hand on her hair and put her own hand up to touch his, but he’d moved and she’d met only the empty air.
‘Because I’m just a tart. That’s what you thought before, and it’s true.’
‘No!’ He’d said it so loudly that she’d jumped, and this time he did touch her, bending over to take her face in his hands and look at her closely. She could just see the gleam of his eyes in the darkness. ‘No, Lexie. I never said it, nor meant it. The reason you were so angry with me that morning was that you felt so bad and thought it of yourself. Not because I did. I still see you as I always did.’
‘And how is that?’ She had said it softly, wanting him to tell her good things, needing the comfort of soothing words, wanting to feel herself made new again in good language. But he shook his head, let go of her and said lightly, ‘One of these days I’ll tell you. Right now, get dressed and come out to have a meal. You look famished. Are you?’
‘Yes,’ she’d said, and obediently had gone to dress, putting on the prettiest frock she had, a crêpe de chine with a ribbon sash around the hips in a deep blue that she knew made the most of her slanted eyes and her dark hair. He took her out to dinner at a small Italian restaurant in the King’s Road, where they had talked of music and books and cricket as though there had been no break in their old friendship.
It was still the same. He wouldn’t talk of the past, of his own feelings, or allow her to talk of hers, just as Bessie refused to do. She had been forced to accept that that was the way things had to be. There was nothing more she could do.
But he had talked, forcefully, of the practicalities of her situation.
‘It’s quite absurd that you should starve yourself in this fashion,’ he’d said when he realized how much her resources had dwindled. ‘I’ll talk to your bank manager, see to it you get an overdraft. You won’t be the first performer to need one, and you certainly won’t be the last. You’ll be back in work eventually, of course, and then you’ll be able to pay it back. When it comes to money you really are very foolish, aren’t you?’
She had agreed humbly that she was, even let him talk to the bank manager, and breathed again when he had cheerfully agreed (with Max Cramer’s assurance that all would be well, why shouldn’t he?) to provide her with overdraft facilities for the next six months.
‘If you haven’t got a good new act by then, and good bookings, Lexie, you’ll have to think of a new occupation,’ Max told her over dinner one evening. ‘But until then you’re free to work at getting the act right, and then —’
‘I can’t see beyond this damned case,’ she’d said, twisting her cocktail glass between her fingers. ‘It’s there every morning when I wake up and it’s there when I fall asleep. I can’t think of going to Cochran about his American revue, can I? If they’re going to call me into court, I can’t go abroad —’
‘It’d be wiser not to. No one can stop you, of course, though they could call you back, I suppose. I’ll see what I can do to find out how things are going. And whether they’re going to call you —’
But he didn’t have to do much to find out. Three days later she opened her door to a peremptory ring, to find a man in a thick serge suit and heavy black boots who pushed a piece of paper into her hand, tipped his bowler hat and went clumping noisily down the stairs, leaving her staring at the paper. A subpoena. She had to give evidence in the case of Fox v Fox in the High Court on 22 September 1927 — she felt sick for a moment as she read the black words, and had to lean against the doorpost to recover.
‘At last,’ Max said calmly when she called him. ‘Better than waiting. They’ve put it early in the calendar, and that’s good. I’ll be there with you — don’t panic. We’ll sort it out. With a little luck there’ll be a juicier case for the papers to get hold of — we’ll keep our fingers crossed.’
It was a precaution that got them nowhere. Max told her, the night before the case was to be heard, that Monty’s solicitor had made sure that as many Fleet Street people as possible knew what was brewing. His face was pinched with anger as he explained to her what it would be like, and she listened and nodded and tried to understand, but it was exceedingly difficult to imagine something of which you have no experience, she discovered.
‘Wear the simplest outfit you’ve got,’ Max advised her as he said goodnight the evening before, leaving her as he always did at the front door of the block of flats in Mulberry Walk and not coming up. He never had, since that one and only visit he had made there, the night he had come to warn her of what lay in store. ‘Make it difficult for them. They like picking on fashionable people. Dress it right and we’ll be all right. Goodnight, my dear.’ He’d touched her hand briefly and left her, and she had gone to bed to sleep hardly at all.
The whole episode in court was like a dream; that was the only comfort she had. It was as though it were happening to someone else, and not to her. She saw Dave and Monty sitting there as she was escorted to the witness box, saw how they were glaring at each other, and not looking at her at all, and it wasn’t them, not the people she had known all her life, but stiff awkward strangers who looked like them, odd little people who meant nothing to her. She saw Bessie sitting very stiff and straight at the back with Alex Lazar beside her, and he was the only one who looked like himself, a familiar figure with a familiar grin. But she couldn’t respond, for her face felt stiff and frozen as she looked at the barristers, who were the most absurd of all in their wigs and gowns. She couldn’t take them seriously: they had to be play acting, it all had to be play acting.
But then they began and it wasn’t play acting at all, but deadly serious. They stood her alone in the witness box and threw questions at her that seemed harmless and yet, if you stopped to think, were full of menace. Who had paid her rent at the fashionable Mulberry Walk flats? They’re not fashionable, she’d tried to say, and been reprimanded for not answering the question. Had anyone else apart from Mr Fox ever paid her money, apart from payment for — ahem — normal employment? And she had tried to explain that he was her brother-in-law, that he was family, and the man who was questioning her talked smoothly of the fact that he wasn’t a blood relation, of course, but her sister’s husband; and had he ever shown any special marks of — um — interest in her that were other than brotherly?
At this point the opposite barrister had joined in, and although the words that were used were calm and seemed ordinary enough, there was sharp malice between the two counsel as they argued — or seemed to — about whether she should be giving evidence at all. She stared at them and could feel the tension. She looked across their heads to where Max was sitting. He made the briefest of nods and she felt, momentarily, reassured. But then the questioning had started again and gone on and on and on until she hardly knew what she was saying. Not until they told her she could leave the witness box did she really feel she understood what was going on, and she wanted to tell them, wanted to explain that earlier she’d been confused, didn’t really know what she was saying, please let me start again, I’ll get it clearer this time —
But they were hurrying h
er out of court, back to the witnesses’ room, and there she had to sit until Max came to fetch her. It seemed hours that she sat there, alone and frightened and very, very tired. Even a day of dancing had never left her as exhausted as that half hour standing in the witness box and being questioned. She sat with her eyes closed, her head resting against the dirty distemper of the wall, and tried to go over in her mind what had happened there in court. Would the people listening think she was a tart? That she had allowed Dave and heaven knew who else pay her money for — for what? All she had meant to do in letting Dave pay the rent was to punish him for using her as he had. That had been all it was, just getting her own back.
When at last Max had come to fetch her she had jumped to her feet hopefully, hurrying towards him with her hands outstretched.
‘Is it all right, Max? Is it all over?’
‘Not really,’ he said, and his face was grim. ‘Look, it isn’t going to be easy. They’ve found for Monty — they’re sending the papers to the DPP, I’m afraid —’
‘The DPP?’
‘The Public Prosecutor. That means they think there’s been a criminal offence. Dave might have to go to court again. I just don’t know. The thing is, the press are all over the place. They’ve been asking questions of everyone who comes out, and they’re all waiting for you. You look all right, thank God. That suit’s just right. Not too smart, not too dowdy. Put your hat on — that’s it. Pull it well down. I’ll get you out as fast as I can —’
‘Bessie?’ she said, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. ‘Where’s Bessie?’
‘I’ve sent her home. I’ve arranged for you to go to her place from here. No, don’t look like that. They’ll be hanging round your own flat, I’m afraid. I’m sorry it’s worked out this way, Lexie, I truly am —’ He put his hands on her shoulders, and shook her slightly, as though to force his apology into her.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘It’s mine. I should never have let him —’
Family Chorus Page 25