Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  ‘No, God no. That place makes my skin crawl. Answer my question. Does Roy have that kind of power?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. Maybe. The studios rule, and men like Roy are … They have a lot of power. But I know Roy, and I trust him.’

  ‘I don’t. They have made a fool of me.’

  Gigi was thoughtful for a while. ‘It would have been the same no matter who came for him, Quentin. Or even if no one had come. It doesn’t reflect on you, personally.’

  ‘That doesn’t help. I have bollocksed this badly.’

  She put the key in the ignition. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘If I eat anything I’ll be sick. I feel sick anyway.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Home. Home to London. But I have days and days left. And the four-day crossing after that …’ He raised his glasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘It’s really all too much to bear. I’ve failed. Worse, I’ve been used, and I know it, and so will everyone else.’

  Gigi sighed. ‘Me too. Played for a chump. They probably gave me this car and told me to look after you to keep you, I don’t know, busy. Maybe I was supposed to go to bed with you. I guess they think I’m irresistible,’ she added, but he did not respond. They sat in silence, save for the some nearby twittering birds in the hibiscus bushes. ‘Would you like to learn to drive?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could teach you.’

  Quentin put his glasses back on. ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’

  ‘This is a British car, baby. I could teach you to drive, and then when you go home to London you’ll know how.’

  ‘Look, Gigi, I can’t afford a car. I’m a junior partner in a literary agency, peddling the lowly or troublesome writers my father can’t be bothered with.’

  ‘Francis Carson was an important writer. You represent him.’

  ‘I don’t. He is my father’s client. The truth is, I never even talked to him. I only saw him once.’

  ‘If he wasn’t your friend, why did you come?’

  ‘I made a promise to his wife. I said I would act in her stead, in her interest, that I would bring him home. Somehow I thought it would be dignified. And now, what is he? A box of ashes,’ he said sourly. ‘I don’t have the second suitcase. I don’t have Claire’s letters. I don’t even know the name of his bank. And I’m taking him home in what looks like a chocolate box.’

  ‘You have twenty thousand dollars for her.’

  ‘Yes, but for the firm, for our agency? Nothing. No posthumous work. My father will certainly think I have failed, and spent a lot of bloody money into the bargain. Miss Sherrill will never let me forget it.’

  ‘Who is Miss Sherrill?’

  ‘The other partner. She hates me. Who can blame her? Nepotism, you know. Father’s firm. I join, and presto! I’m a partner, following in Father’s footsteps.’ He gave a low, dismal chuckle.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Oh, there’s an old music-hall tune, “Following In Father’s Footsteps”. About a drunk. There’s no other work I could have done, no other profession I could have taken up.’

  ‘What did you want to do?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s pathetic.’ He turned to her candidly. ‘I never had a passion for anything at all. I like to read, that’s all.’

  ‘We’re more alike than you know, Quentin.’

  ‘I suppose we are. I apologize for calling you shallow.’

  ‘No apology necessary. I am shallow.’

  ‘But very pretty.’

  She reached over and touched his arm. ‘Look, let me teach you how to drive, and at least you’d have that when you go back.’

  ‘You never give up, do you? You’re just like an old dog with a slipper. Once you get your teeth into something, you never let go. Look at what I’m wearing. You put me in these clothes!’ He held his arms out.

  ‘You look great.’ She turned the ignition and pulled the choke. The motor leapt to life; the car hummed. ‘And no, I never do give up. Do you want to learn to drive? It’s a useful skill. Really.’

  ‘I’ve never even tried.’

  ‘It’s easy. It’s like a little dance you do with your feet, clutch, gas, and then your hand on the gearshift, first, second, third. We can’t go back to the studio till Monday anyway. Do you want to learn or not? I know just the place to teach you. Plenty of room. No cops.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Mexico. Baja. Come on. What have you got to lose?’

  Perhaps it was not a serious question, but Quentin took it seriously. Pondered it. Not only there, in that moment, in the dappled sunshine, and on the road going south to Mexico, but later, that weekend, and later still, years later, he would wonder what he had to lose. The answers changed over time, but whatever he lost was certainly worth the cost for what he gained.

  PART III

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RETURN OF THE NATIVE

  The cab’s headlamps barely dented the broth of fog and soot and night as the driver inched along, chatting about the weather which, in his ’umble opinion, was getting worse every year. Flattened with fatigue, Quentin could only grunt in reply. At Quentin’s home, the cabbie kindly helped him haul the two suitcases to his front step, where the door was locked.

  ‘Worse luck,’ said the cabbie cheerfully. ‘The old ball-and-chain’s locked you out, has she?’

  ‘I suppose she has.’ Hardly worth it to explain that he was arriving home five days sooner than anyone expected. None of his family knew he had bought a Pan American ticket in Los Angeles, booked flights all the way to London, a transcontinental to New York and thence transatlantic to London. Riding with Gigi Fischer had made him less afraid of flying, though he had hardly slept in days.

  Slivering sleety bits of rain beat down as Quentin rummaged about in his Burberry pockets for his keys. He found his Mexican sunglasses, but not the key. He opened the leather case, knelt and muddled through its contents, finding the key at the bottom. The house he entered was dark, and chill. He left the bags by the door, and dropped his hat on the umbrella stand. Louisa Partridge’s words came to him. The cab left me off in front of the house in Chiswick. My key still fit in the door. I opened it, and Herbert was exactly where I had left him. As if nothing had changed. He walked, peering into each room, like a guest, or a ghost. Chintz chairs in the sitting room faced each other across a tea table. The wireless stood silent. His own chair sat by the window with the stacks of manuscripts on a table nearby, their pages hanging out, like white tongues lolling. He glanced into the dining room, its sturdy oak table and empty chairs, the purple African violets on one windowsill, the aspidistra in the other. The narrow passage to the kitchen where the smell of Effie’s fags still lingered, and the tap dripped with a metronome’s precision. Everything was exactly the same. Except for Quentin.

  Quentin Castle came home a changed man, though not as changed as Frank Carson, whose ashes were in the black velvet box. With Gigi at the wheel of the MG, they sped through southern California and crossed the border into Tijuana. Beyond Tijuana’s galaxy of septic stench and piñata colours, a ribbon of pocked road separated low, dry hills from the pounding surf of the Pacific. She pulled over, got out of the MG, and said it was his turn to drive. Before he took the wheel, he took her in his arms and kissed her. In those three days in Mexico he learned how to drive a car, to feel the wheel beneath his right hand, the throttle of the gearshift in his left as he leaned the MG into curves and swerved around potholes in the Mexican roads, or over the beaches of Baja. He drove to the Jacaranda Café in Ensenada, where lacy purple blossoms fell, to the Rosarita Beach Hotel where he danced with Gigi on the hotel patio to tinny and repetitive Mexican music. They walked from the hotel, barefoot, and stood before the waves crashing into foaming flounces on the smooth sand beach marred by trash, empty beer bottles and used condoms like tiny, spent jellyfish. He tasted for the first time tequila and tortillas and jalapeños, and guacamole made from the weird, soft avo
cados, limes and cilantro, tastes he had never even imagined. He learned how to make love in a way he had never imagined.

  Quentin stripped off his clothes, stepping out of them, leaving them where they fell on the bathroom floor instead of methodically hanging them. He used the toilet and washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth without looking in the mirror. In the bedroom the lamp by Florence’s side of the bed was on, and she had fallen asleep reading her Barbara Cartland novel, her head to one side, her breath heavy and soft. The room itself was in total disarray; a nightgown lay in a heap on the floor. Other clothes, stockings, dressing gown, knickers, a slip, a blouse, were strewn about, almost happily, it seemed to Quentin. He had no idea she was so untidy. It was endearing, to think she had a secret side of herself when he was not there. A single lipsticked cigarette butt lay in the ashtray by the bed.

  She roused slowly. ‘Quentin? Quentin, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Quentin, you’re home so soon! I didn’t expect …’

  ‘I know, Florence. I missed you.’ He went to the bed and she flung the satiny quilt back, and opened her arms to him, to warm him, to comfort him. He went to her and drank in with gratitude the scent of her, powder and perfume and sweat. Sustenance.

  Miss Marr, Miss Sherrill and Monica were nearly as surprised to see him in the office late the next morning as Florence had been the night before. They commented on how different he looked, though words failed them. He was certainly browner or pinker or something. They offered him a cup of tea, and exclamations of alarm.

  ‘You flew from New York to London! Wasn’t it terrifying?’

  ‘I tried to think of it as a modern adventure.’

  ‘And was it?’ asked Miss Sherrill.

  ‘Yes.’ He put his leather case down and took off his Burberry, hung it on the rack with all the others, still damp, their human miasmas mixing in the heat of the nearby radiator. He took the Cunard ticket from his pocket and gave it to Miss Marr. ‘Get us a refund, will you, please?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think they’d give us a refund just because you changed your mind, Quentin.’

  ‘Miss Marr, I do not doubt that you can do anything you really want to achieve.’

  Miss Marr’s sallow face flushed, and she patted her hairpins.

  ‘Would you please tell me when my father comes in,’ he said, knowing full well that Albert’s entrances were always known to the entire office.

  ‘You mean Mr Castle don’t know you’re back either?’ asked Monica.

  In fact he did not. What Quentin had to tell his father, as with what he had to tell Claire Carson – the failure of his mission, the failure of this fool’s errand – could only be said face to face. This morning he had told Florence nothing of substance. She was content with a bowdlerized version of the goings on at the Garden of Allah, and thrilled to hear of his long chat with Linda St John (that’s how he told it, a long, cordial, on-set conversation) and disappointed he hadn’t got an autograph. Florence cared nothing for the death of Francis Carson, whose remains she assumed were decently in the capable hands of London undertakers, and not in her own front hall.

  ‘I got in very late last night,’ Quentin said to Miss Sherrill, Miss Marr and Monica. ‘By the way, has there been any word on Mrs Partridge’s new book?’

  ‘They all three came back,’ said Miss Marr. ‘Chatto and Windus, John Murray, The Bodley Head. They’re all on your desk.’

  And so they were. All three manuscripts returned. The three declines for Louisa Partridge’s Apricot Olive Lemon he laid out side by side on the blotter. All stale phrases … lovely that Castle had thought of them … should Mrs Partridge wish to write something along the lines of her classic … happy to … He skimmed through the other letters stacked on his desk. Nothing of interest, save for one letter in a strong, hasty hand.

  Harrington Hall nr Woodstock

  15 February 1950

  Dear Quentin,

  The outpouring of grief and sympathy and offers of help when people have learned of Frank’s death has left me humbled and anxious, contrite and comforted all in the same moment. I cannot begin to describe, certainly not in the midst of everything obliged of me, how I truly feel. I dash this off to let you know that when you return from California, we won’t be at Harrington Hall.

  We are just moving into north Oxford, Summertown, Polstead Road. Prof. Ellsworth, a longtime admirer of Frank’s work (he used to come out here to talk literature with Frank, to catch the pearls of wisdom as they dropped from Frank’s lips; that was Frank’s description of their afternoons), has offered to sublet their place on Polstead Road for three years while he will be teaching in America. Very modest terms. I think there is a telephone there, but I don’t know. I’ll call your office if there is. I’m in such a rush, packing, no, not packing, really just throwing what I want to take into crates and boxes. I’ll come back and go through the rest. I’ve no time to find a new tenant. I don’t care, really. I plan to sell Harrington Hall as soon as I can, and you cannot imagine my joy at being out of here and moving into town. The animals, of course, are a problem. The dogs Pooh and Tigger are good farm dogs and someone will take them, and the pigs and chickens and ducks, they’ll go, but no one wants the horse. It is good for nothing. We only kept it to amuse the children. I fear I’ll have to have it knackered. Cats always fend for themselves. You can’t imagine everything, large and small, I have to deal with.

  Thank you for bringing Frank home, Quentin. I am so grateful for your seeing to everything.

  And I’m grateful to your father too for advancing money. I look forward to seeing you.

  Yours in haste,

  Claire Carson

  PS I have quit smoking. Just quit. I never again want to need something as badly as I wanted a cigarette in those days before you came here.

  He read it twice, and then called his mother. Margaret too wanted to know all about Linda St John. She demanded to know what drove him to the foolhardy extreme of a transcontinental and a transatlantic flight. Quentin listened to her with forbearance and affection while he again reread Claire’s letter. Tomorrow. He would see her tomorrow. North Oxford. He rang off with Margaret, and made a new file for the cabinet, Claire Carson, and put the letter in. His happiness at the thought of seeing Claire again was tainted with anxiety, dreading what he had to tell her.

  Quentin removed his glasses, massaged the top of his nose, and stared out the window at the well-known view, the roofs and chimney pots softened by the light, ashy snow. He closed his eyes and saw instead Gigi with a yellow hibiscus tucked behind her ear, and another tucked in the cleavage of the off-shoulder blouse she had bought in Ensenada, leaning together over a table shaded by an umbrella thatched of palm fronds. They would go up to their room and make love. The recollection came to him with a splash of lime and jalapeños, margaritas with salt around the rim of the glass, and the scent of something he could not name, not even in the moment. He opened his eyes and glanced at the carriage clock on his desk. Nearly ten. Two in the morning in Los Angeles. Gigi would be asleep. He could not picture her life at all. Perhaps that was the way of all love affairs. They had nothing to do with the rest of one’s life. He could only picture her behind the wheel of the MG, on the beach at Rosarita, the sunny streets of Ensenada, the hotel bar, their tousled bed. Baja. He liked the softened sound of it, Baja. He liked the hard consonant sound of her name, Gigi. He had gone to bed with a woman not his wife. He knew he should be stricken with guilt. Going to bed with Gigi was a lapse, put mildly, a sin, put boldly, a breach of faith, a broken vow by any standard, but Quentin felt no special regret, indeed Quentin felt only pleasure at the memory of Gigi. She seemed to him like a vivid character in a novel, like Elsie Rose in Some of These Days, an indelible, though unreal memory, a bright experience woven like a brilliant seam across the otherwise neutral fabric of one’s life. Gigi was appetite, he told himself, not sustenance.

  ‘Hello, all!’ Albert Castle’s voice echoed throug
h the office.

  ‘Your son is back,’ said Miss Marr, loud enough that her voice would carry. ‘He’ll be in your office directly.’

  Quentin took the leather case with him. He wasn’t about to carry Francis Carson’s mortal remains through the office.

  His father shook Quentin’s hand genially. ‘Transatlantic flight, eh? Florence called Margaret as soon as you left the house this morning. Hours instead of days. They say speed is the wave of the future, or some such rubbish. Why we should all wish to go faster is beyond me. We paid for the Cunard liner.’

  ‘I’m sure Miss Marr can get a refund.’

  Albert grunted, though in dissent or doubt Quentin could not tell. ‘I’ve had a wire from Roy Rosenbaum saying what a pleasure it was to meet you,’ Albert went on. ‘Oh, and he sent along the name of Carson’s California bank, and the account numbers.’

  ‘That’s more than they would do for me.’ Quentin closed the office door and took a seat in one of the leather chairs by the fireplace He did not wish to face his father across the desk. That chair was quite low, and he always felt like a boy in it. ‘I got bloody nothing from them.’

  ‘Well, maybe they thought it would be better just to send; you know, more efficient.’

  ‘More efficient than dealing with Mrs Carson’s representative while I was there, in Los Angeles? In the office? More efficient than that, Father? And Roy’s lying through his bloody teeth about the pleasure to meet me. It was not a pleasure for anyone. Not for them, and certainly not for me. They are corrupt, the lot of them. Brace yourself for what they’ve done to Some of These Days.’

  As Albert listened, his efforts to light the pipe became more agitated. ‘San Francisco earthquake, indeed! Beastly! Why would Francis do that to his own book?’

  ‘He didn’t! Don’t you understand? He wrote the first version of the script, but he was one of many. As soon as he finished his version, they handed it over to another writer who moved it to 1906, and made Elsie Rose thirty years younger than she is in the novel.’