Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  CHAPTER TEN

  ILL OF THE DEAD

  The MG raced up a long, palm-lined drive and approached a Moorish monstrosity complete with towers and balconies and bougainvillea clinging to the reddish walls, the gardens lit by floodlamps and fountains contrapuntally splashing. A black man in a crisp white jacket emerged from the house, and stood framed in the enormous doorway.

  ‘I call our house the Moroccan Mausoleum,’ said Gigi. ‘I hate it, except for the pool and the tennis courts. Some silent film star built it in the twenties, but Roy and Doris moved in here when they got married, and it’s been home ever since. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at ten.’ As he got out of the MG, she added, ‘They won’t bite, except for the Lotus,’ and sped away.

  ‘Mr Rosenbaum expects you in the conservatory,’ said the man, taking Quentin’s hat.

  Quentin followed him dutifully through cool, high-ceilinged halls with finely polished floors and elegant Persian rugs. They came to double doors that opened into a verdant jungle dominated by huge split-leaf philodendrons, towering ficus, rubber trees and masses of brilliant orchids in pots. Lounges and thickly cushioned chairs were set at companionable angles surrounding a low bamboo table with a drinks cart to the side. So tropical, Quentin thought, Peter Lorre might have lurked behind one of the palm fronds.

  A tall, casually dressed man with silver hair rose, took his hand, and introduced himself as Roy Rosenbaum. ‘My wife, Doris.’ He pointed to an older, thinner, version of Gigi who wore an expression of practised serenity. ‘My daughter, Lois, and her husband, Aaron Reichart. We are so sorry for your loss. We were all devastated. What a talent he had. Never have I met anyone with such creative flair. What are you drinking?’

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ said Quentin, surprised to have an icy glass instantly thrust into his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We are ready for you,’ said Roy with a sad smile. ‘We know what you need.’

  The two women were languid; they seemed to mirror the orchids that dangled pendulously nearby. They wore sleek clothes in pale orchid colours, and like Gigi they were tanned, though they had none of her careless candour. The men were brisk, their movements economical, as though constantly weighing the outlay of energy or charm or goodwill against some imagined cost only they could tally. Roy Rosenbaum was a good deal older than Doris, perhaps sixty, slim, unstooped, and authoritative. He wore a camel-coloured sport coat, double-breasted, of elegant material, a pale shirt and a fine tie. His gaze was benign.

  ‘I hope you’re finding our Gigi amusing,’ he said.

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘And her driving?’ asked Aaron, a man whose receding hairline and ample torso announced impending middle age.

  ‘Her driving is … remarkable.’

  ‘You should have never given her that car, Daddy,’ said the Lotus, a woman perhaps thirty-five, her face dominated by a brilliant mouth, cherry-red lips and white teeth. ‘She’s wrecked two cars already. And three speeding tickets last year.’

  ‘Not altogether wrecked,’ said Doris on her daughter’s behalf.

  ‘The Packard cost more to fix than it was worth.’

  ‘Was it a gruelling journey, Mr Castle?’ asked Roy. ‘Did you fly?’

  ‘I came on the Queen Mary to New York, and flew from there.’

  They all agreed that the big airplanes were bad for you, that they took your body and put it down in one place when your mind was still in another. The only truly refined travel was on the great ocean liners. Doris went on at length about the Cunard liner they had sailed on last spring. She waxed eloquent about the amenities until Roy coughed, and put a fresh gin and tonic in Quentin’s hand. ‘I’ve always wondered why Arthur Rank or one of those producers didn’t do Some of These Days. It’s such a quintessentially English story.’

  Quentin found himself thrashing through the joyless explanation that though he couldn’t answer for Arthur Rank, during the war, a story of an ageing music-hall warbler wasn’t sufficiently heroic, and after the war, Francis Carson and his work had suffered somewhat of an eclipse due to his having been a conscientious objector.

  ‘Sad, the way people must sometimes pay for the past,’ said Doris. ‘We’re going through that now, here, with the House of Un-American Activities. They call people to Washington, and grill them about their past and—’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they pay for the past?’ snapped Aaron, lighting up a Chesterfield. ‘They did it, didn’t they? Whatever it was.’

  ‘But it was so long ago,’ Doris maintained. ‘Almost twenty years. The world was different then. People got caught up in all sorts of political enthusiasms, and to take people now at the height of their careers and make them pay for youthful indiscretions, it seems so—’

  ‘I’m sure Quentin doesn’t want to hear about American politics,’ said Roy. The finality in his voice put the topic to rest. He turned to Quentin. ‘As his friend, you must be devastated by Frank’s death. He was a remarkable talent. A great writer.’

  ‘Perhaps he was a great writer,’ said the Lotus with a sniff, ‘but he could be very abrasive. He propositioned all the women, and if they didn’t go to bed with him, he’d sing dirty songs at parties, and use their names in the lyrics. Really, Daddy, I don’t know why you tolerated him, all that bad behaviour. You wouldn’t put up with it from anyone else.’

  Beneath his tan, Roy flushed slightly. ‘He wasn’t like everyone else.’

  ‘It’s sad,’ Doris mused, ‘but perhaps his death will spark new interest in his work.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Quentin replied. ‘My father says Selwyn and Archer will publish a new edition of Some of These Days within a week. It was a huge success in ’39, the last great book before the war. Elsie Rose, and all that lyricism and emotion, struck a chord of nostalgia even before we needed it. During the war, it was printed on such cheap paper that copies of Some of These Days would go from hand to hand until the book itself dissolved, the very pages. People wept for Elsie Rose. They loved her.’ He sipped the unusually icy drink. ‘English literature lost three great authors in as many weeks: Orwell, McVicar and Carson.’

  ‘Did George Orwell die?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘January 21st,’ Quentin replied.

  ‘I don’t believe I know the name McVicar,’ said Roy.

  Quentin described the great climber’s exploits, books that had filled the British reading public with vicarious adventure. Roy and Aaron agreed such books were unsuited to pictures, too expensive to produce. Orwell’s work was too grey and grim, but Carson! All those headlong love affairs! All that opulent sex! Their talk then turned to a string of American pictures, American names, discussed in a jargon that reminded Quentin of a conversation he had once tried to have with a Scotsman while on a walking tour in the Hebrides where they both spoke English, but neither could understand the other. Quentin felt the foreigner in every imaginable way, even foreign to his own skin, or perhaps that was Frank Carson’s clothes.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re boring Quentin,’ said Roy.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘When do you leave?’ asked Aaron.

  ‘Tuesday I fly to New York. I’m booked for the Queen Mary next Wednesday, the weekly return to England.’

  They all agreed once again that the great ocean liners were a far more civilized way to travel than the airplane. Doris reiterated how pleasant was their last sailing to England, their first trip since the war, and sadly, they had found England … She sought some elusive description.

  ‘Austere,’ said Quentin, hoping he would not again have to hear his country described as pinched and nasty. ‘We live in an age of austerity.’ The very word seemed to waft over them like the pale smoke from their cigarettes. Quentin added that they had won the war – he included their American allies, naturally – but in England, memory lingered amid the losses and the ruins. His having evoked this unhappy past lay uneasily upon people whose faces were resolutely towards the sunlit future.

  The white-jacketed black man arrived an
d announced dinner was ready. Doris rose in a rustle of chiffon and took Quentin’s arm. She led him to the dining room, chatting all the while about Harrods, and the hotels and the country houses where they had stayed last spring, the titled people they had met, none of whom Quentin knew, not even the names.

  Fatigue, disorientation, two drinks on an empty stomach, his wine glass constantly refilled, the unfamiliar food (a salad served first followed by a thick steak still eerily red in the middle and mounds of golden butter melting on the potatoes), unfamiliar voices, unfamiliar topics of conversation all heightened Quentin’s sense of being somehow tested and found wanting. He felt he was failing to grasp some essential underthread of the conversation, not simply what was being said, but what was being implied, or elided. His understanding rose and ebbed. He struggled to assess his hosts. Roy seemed much as Gigi had painted him, a man who held his power reined in, never parting with more than was necessary, who remained astute, alert, even when practising being at ease. Quentin’s sense of Aaron was not as flattering, but for reasons he couldn’t altogether identify. The Lotus with her bright red mouth did seem to bite and carp. Doris seemed bland, but scattered, a woman accustomed to being ignored. Quentin chewed reflectively on what seemed to him nearly raw meat, thinking of T. S. Eliot and do I dare to eat a peach?

  Roy returned the conversation to Frank Carson and his gifts. Roy had also loved The Moth and the Star. Hay Days, though a lesser novel, had much to recommend it. Roy was sad Frank wouldn’t write any more novels.

  ‘He was writing a novel!’ said Quentin, rousing. ‘He had almost finished it.’

  ‘I’m quite certain he only worked on our film while he was here,’ said Roy. ‘Aaron, do you know of anything else?’ Aaron shook his head.

  ‘His wife told me about it,’ said Quentin. ‘He had it with him. Here. I’m sure it’s in his other suitcase. Where is it, by the way? The second suitcase.’

  ‘Was there some problem with your luggage?’ inquired Doris.

  ‘Francis Carson’s second suitcase. He never travelled light. Mrs Carson says he always took a battered old suitcase full of drafts of his work. He was never without it.’

  ‘We had everything in his place cleaned and pressed and packed,’ said Aaron.

  Quentin hoped they had not noticed he was wearing Frank’s clothes. ‘And what of his personal effects? His letters? His receipts, bank statements, the post he would have received. Where is all that sort of thing? I will want to return everything to Mrs Carson.’

  ‘The Garden of Allah people would have cleaned up the place after his accident.’ Roy turned to Aaron. ‘Call there tomorrow, will you, and ask after all this for Quentin?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They repeated that they would take care of all the dreary bureaucratic work. It would all go smoothly, though no one quite specified what it was, and Quentin, mindful of his manners, did not wish to seem ignorant or rude, though he did ask what would be the protocol for bringing the remains home to England. Roy assured him they had everything he needed, that he should come to Aaron’s office tomorrow after lunch to collect what he needed.

  ‘It seems very odd to me that Francis Carson would drown in a swimming pool,’ said Quentin. ‘He was a strong swimmer. He used to swim in the English Channel.’

  ‘The coroner’s report came in. We have it for you,’ said Aaron. ‘Accidental death by drowning. He was very drunk when he fell in the pool.’

  The Lotus said, ‘Everyone treated Frank well, and that’s how he repays us?’

  ‘Are you referring to his dying?’ asked Quentin, certain now that he too disliked the Lotus.

  ‘Francis Carson was a great loss to us, a great personal loss to all of us,’ said Roy, sounding like a parson delivering a sermon to sinners.

  But the Lotus continued, headlong. ‘He was always scribbling on this or that, papers sticking out of his pockets, pencils behind his ear. Don’t you remember, Daddy, at the Christmas party he stood by the mantel, writing away, and when I asked him why, he said he was taking notes, and he’d return to England and write a tell-all novel about us.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Roy. ‘He was well treated here.’

  ‘Very well treated,’ said Doris.

  Roy turned his full attention to Quentin. ‘He was at the prime of his artistic life, and his death will be long felt. We loved his book, and he loved our movie.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Aaron.

  Quentin nodded, by now resigned to the nearly raw steak, and actually, with lots of salt, rather liking it. He was enjoying the never-ending Bordeaux as well. Everyone except Roy drank lavishly, and empty bottles vanished at the hands of invisible servants, and new ones took their place. ‘But I keep wondering,’ Quentin went on, ‘I mean, why did Francis Carson go into the pool? Did he just jump in? Did he fall in?’

  ‘It was an accidental death,’ Roy reminded them. ‘No matter what sort of tripe and innuendo the press offers up. We, movie people, are always the objects of scandalous speculation. We have to be more circumspect than most. Reputation is everything.’

  ‘Caesar’s wife,’ offered Doris.

  ‘He was alone,’ said Aaron, ‘so no one knows the answer to your question, Quentin. There weren’t any witnesses.’

  ‘Gigi said he was at a party the night he died,’ Quentin persisted, the wine fuelling his curiosity.

  ‘There was a birthday party for Gilbert Vernon,’ said Doris, ‘the director. Linda St John is his wife.’

  Quentin’s breath came in short piercing stabs, as if, like John McVicar, the altitude had robbed him of thought and oxygen. ‘The party was at her house? Her husband’s house?’

  ‘Frank was very drunk,’ said Roy. ‘He was often very drunk.’

  ‘More drunk than usual,’ said Aaron. ‘The party was over and they found him sprawled and asleep in one of the servant’s bedrooms.’

  ‘Who found him?’ asked Quentin.

  ‘The servants,’ said Aaron, ‘of course. When they went to bed.’

  ‘Someone drove him back to the Garden,’ said Roy drily, ‘and left him off.’

  ‘Who? Who drove him?’

  ‘Do you remember who, Aaron?’

  ‘Their chauffeur.’

  Roy made a gesture with his hand, and from a doorway hitherto unseen persons emerged, cleared the plates, and laid clean forks for dessert. ‘I so wish Frank had gone home to England when he had the chance.’

  ‘The chance?’ Quentin gulped from his water glass, thus far untouched. He resolved to clear his mind. To focus.

  ‘After he finished his draft of the script, we told him, thank you, Frank, you’ve done a great job and we’re grateful. We’ll have someone have another look at it, and you can go home now.’

  The Lotus turned to Quentin. ‘It’s not like writing a book. Lots of people contribute to a script. It’s really a collective work, but he insisted it was his book, and he must be part of the picture.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aaron, ‘he went around shouting something like, “Play up! Play up the game!” What exactly does that mean, Quentin?’

  Quentin (casting about for some explanation that didn’t involve hundreds of years of inbred education, classical training, caning, banality, brutality and Flanders Field) was spared this Augean task because the dessert arrived, a beautiful confection of creamy colours.

  ‘Ah, our cook is famous for her almond cheesecake,’ said Roy. ‘Do you like cheesecake?’

  ‘I hardly know.’ He did like the cheesecake. It was even better with the liqueurs that magically appeared, each in small crystal glasses.

  ‘His death has upset everything,’ said Doris, her voice moist with the cocktails, the wine, and now the liqueurs. ‘It’s all so unseemly, and everyone here was so distraught, so unnerved, they had to shut down production. Linda left town. She was so devastated, she couldn’t even—’

  ‘Yes,’ Aaron snapped, ‘and because of that we’ve got a lot of people standing around collecting paycheques for d
oing nothing while the star and the director nurse their wounds.’

  ‘Why can’t you just give people a chance to grieve, Aaron?’

  ‘We did, dear,’ said Roy. ‘Now it’s time to go back to work. Tomorrow. Cameras roll again tomorrow.’ He dabbed his lips with his napkin. ‘Everybody back on their heads.’

  At this all tension evaporated, as Roy laughed heartily, as Aaron chortled and the two women giggled irrepressibly, and good spirits seemingly totally restored. Quentin, bewildered, couldn’t see anything funny. He applied himself to the almond cheesecake, and Roy said that Gigi would be his personal driver and guide, and he should feel free to ask her for anything.

  ‘Anything within reason,’ said Doris.

  Roy put a stopper in each of the liqueur bottles. He said again how sorry they were for Quentin’s loss, and literature’s loss. Their collective level gaze rested upon him, and Quentin did not need the refined social sense of a peer of the realm to know the evening was at an end.

  The car that took him back to the Garden of Allah reminded Quentin of a yacht. He hadn’t much experience of yachts, but one of his father’s titled authors had taken them on a cruise off the Isle of Wight once when he was just a boy. The Rosenbaums’ car was vast, huge like a yacht, the purr of the motor like a yacht, and by the time he got out, Quentin thought he might be a trifle seasick.

  Certainly he was disoriented and he could not remember the path to his own villa. He wandered the Garden of Allah, occasionally accosted by some roistering drunk or another, asking directions or offering inebriate wisdom. He brushed them off. The night air had a light chill, not seriously cold, as if the weather were merely decorative, though women in fur coats walked past him, and men wore scarves. Like actors, Quentin thought, like actors playing Chekhov on stage, pretending to be Russians bundled against imaginary snows. Around him, from the open windows, there came the sounds of music, domestic quarrelling, social gatherings, tinny applause probably from a radio or television, and the unmistakable high-pitched squeals of a couple in sexual throes. Probably not connubial throes, Quentin thought, pausing briefly to listen. He could not imagine Florence and himself making such unguarded sounds.