‘Carson must have been appalled.’
‘I was appalled. I can’t even begin to imagine what Frank must have felt.’ Having worn his clothes and carried his ashes, Quentin could never again think of him as the distant, formal Carson. ‘They wanted him to go back to England after he finished, but he didn’t. By then, he was bedding Linda St John.’
‘No! The actress! He was bedding her? Linda St John! Really!’
‘Regularly. I think her husband killed him.’
At that Albert Castle went to the desk, punched the intercom and told Miss Marr to hold all calls. He went to the door of his office and locked it, leaving the key in the hole. He returned to the chairs before the grate and sat opposite his son, cautioned him to keep his voice low, that Miss Marr had the hearing of a cat. ‘Murder? How do you know he was murdered?’
‘I don’t,’ Quentin confessed. ‘But I think it might be, certainly, it could be.’
‘Have you any proof?’
‘No. What was I supposed to do? Badger the police? I’m not Hercule Poirot, Father.’ Quentin’s shoulders sagged. ‘I have no proof at all. None. Just a feeling.’
Albert snorted. ‘Well, then, you had better not be offering that little observation round town, had you? That had better stay right within these walls. Isn’t it bad enough that he’s died, but you would have him murdered by a jealous husband like a third-rate crime novel?’
‘Sorry. It was just a thought. He was a strong swimmer. Why would he drown in a pool?’
‘Will you just shut up, sir!’
‘Yes.’
‘Let that be an end to it. And the body? Where is that?’
‘Here.’ His hands trembling, Quentin opened the briefcase and took out the black velvet box and put it on the marble tea table between them. ‘Francis Carson.’
Albert’s usually cheery countenance went white as he struggled with the meaning of his son’s words and the fact of the box. The only other time Quentin had seen his father express such utter dismay, pale disbelief, even horror, was when they received the telegram with news of Robert’s death. ‘Francis Carson in there? That is…?’ Albert wagged his finger at the box. ‘How can that be? What happened?’
As Quentin told his story, Albert simply listened and smoked. His father’s silence reproached him painfully. However, he left out the part that when, on Monday morning, he and Gigi had pulled up to the Regent Films entrance booth, they were absolutely denied the right to enter. Moreover the guard said the order had come from Mr Rosenbaum himself: Gigi Fischer was not allowed in. The rebuke angered Quentin, but it stung Gigi, first into shock, then into rage that erupted into invective splattered at Aaron, the Lotus, and included Roy as well. She drove around the block, returned and tried another booth, only to be told the same thing more emphatically. Gigi Fischer was banned from Regent Films. Her native ebullience instantly soured into grimness, and her driving became even more heedless and headlong as she propelled the MG to the Garden of Allah where Quentin had a noisy, pointless quarrel with the incompetent manager. The manager steadfastly maintained his staff had washed the deceased’s clothes, and packed them into the only suitcase on the premises. If anyone else had been in Frank’s villa, the manager absolutely knew nothing of it. Disgusted, Quentin returned to the villa, threw his own things into his suitcase, snapped it shut, and asked Gigi to take him to the airport. Now. Monday. A day early. Their parting was not hostile, but neither was it sweet. They were no longer lovers. The magic of Mexico, that was gone, fled, dissolved, erased. He got out of the car, and they did not kiss goodbye. That much of the story – that and Mexico itself – he did not tell his father.
Albert puffed out clouds of smoke, as the depth, the scope of Quentin’s failures, became more and more apparent. When, clearly, there was no second suitcase, no lucrative posthumous possibilities forthcoming, Albert’s mood further darkened. ‘This whole trip … the entire …’ Albert blustered, stammered, ‘has been …’
‘A snafu,’ said Quentin, ‘from beginning to end.’
‘A what?’
‘Disaster. I did the best I could.’
‘Yes, and we can all see how well that worked out!’ Albert stared at the black velvet box. ‘This certainly changes the question of burial, doesn’t it? Lady Sybil Dane has been in and out of here, dealing with Enid, mercifully. Oh, fancy Enid’s response when she sees …’ He pointed to the box. ‘When she hears …’
Quentin could all too well imagine Miss Sherrill’s stinging response. He stared at the match burns in the carpet.
‘Lady Sybil’s offered Woodlands, the family mausoleum there, for Francis. The wife, the FMB, has agreed.’
‘I find that hard to believe. Mrs Carson detests Lady Sybil.’
‘That may be, but she’s agreed nonetheless. She … God! I should never have let you go on such a difficult, delicate matter. You’ve bollocksed the whole thing! You’re inexperienced. I should have … A situation like this …’ He quickly relit his pipe and puffed the unsaid into smoke circling the room. ‘Now I shall have to tell the FMB that her husband …’ Again he wagged his finger at the black box, bereft of any words adequate to the moment.
‘To call Mrs Carson the FMB seems ungenerous under the circumstances. We want to keep her as a client.’
‘Indeed we do, and won’t she be pleased to see that you’ve made a total cock-up of it.’
Quentin burned with shame. A mere foretaste of what he would feel facing Claire. Yet face her he must. ‘Whatever blame there is is mine, and I will accept it. But I shall do it face to face.’
‘What! Do you think for one minute I will entrust you with this any further? Are you mad?’
‘I should be the one to see Mrs Carson. I acted on her behalf.’
‘You will do as I say. Francis has been my client since ’37.’
‘Do you want to hand her this box with his ashes?’
Albert smoked furiously. ‘I see what you mean. Quite right. She’s moved to north Oxford.’
‘I know. I had a letter from her. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘Tell her to make an appointment with me, at her convenience, naturally, and we’ll discuss what’s to be done with Francis’s work.’
‘I suppose you will renegotiate with Selwyn and Archer for better terms for new editions of Frank’s books, especially if his work continues to sell well.’
‘Oh, of course I will try. But I rather doubt interest in his work will last. No offence to Francis.’ Albert glanced uneasily at the black velvet box. ‘There’ll be a spasm of appreciation for his work, a year, perhaps, and then it’ll be over. Without new work, he’ll be forgotten. That’s the way it always happens.’
‘Sydney Thaxton is still read and admired.’
‘Perhaps,’ Albert said with a shrug, ‘but he is rather an anomaly, and who knows if that will last. I’ve been at this trade too long, thirty years, and I personally don’t believe there is such a thing as deathless prose, or even great authors – oh, Shakespeare aside, of course. There are authors who make a sort of lovely splash, lots of praise and attention, money, and then the fashion changes – don’t think it won’t – and it’s over. Look at Galsworthy, Michael Arlen, Compton McKenzie, Hugh Walpole, all wonderful writers in their day, sold like mad, lauded, courted up, adored. Still readable, but no one does. Their books are rotting on second-hand barrows. Who reads Sir Walter Scott any more? All those fine leather-bound collections of the Waverley novels? Doorstops in Blackpool lodging houses. Speaking of passé authors, what news of Louisa’s book? Is it true you sent it out without asking her for revision?’
‘It is.’
‘To whom?’
‘Chatto and Windus, The Bodley Head and Murray.’
‘And?’ The word hung between them, dripping irony, and Quentin did not reply. ‘Of course! Everyone knows it must be poison if Bernard turned it down. Have you told Louisa?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I shouldn’t think she will much like that. Hmmph. N
ow, go ring your mother. At least she’ll be glad you’re home.’ He rose and returned to his desk.
‘I already talked with her.’ Quentin placed the large envelope on the table. ‘The death certificate, coroner’s report. All that.’
‘Fine. Go. Take that—’ He pointed to the box ‘—with you.’
‘Don’t you want to keep the envelope, read the death certificate, or any of it?’
Albert’s broad brow wrinkled with genuine perplexity. ‘Take the box of ashes. I can’t bear to have them near me. Leave the rest. I will look at it. I suppose I must. Come collect it this afternoon at three.’
‘There is some good news for Mrs Carson.’
‘Really? To go along with her husband’s death and cremation?’
Quentin flushed. ‘The studio assigned the life insurance policy to the wife, and she gets double because it was an accident.’
‘Life insurance policy?’
‘They take out policies on the principals in any film, with the studio as the beneficiary, and they let them lapse when the film is done. The film was not done, and the policy had not lapsed, and Regent Films assigned it to Mrs Carson. She will get twenty thousand American dollars.’
Albert repeated this incredible sum breathlessly, adding, ‘To think how I fostered his career! I slaved for that thankless drunk! What would he have been without me? Just another scribbler. A schoolmaster getting his petard hoisted by the local ladies! Everything I gave to him! My time, my insight, my hard work!’ He brought his fist down on the desk. ‘And she gets twenty thousand American dollars? And we haven’t got a sixpence, and not so much as a posthumous scrap to offer.’ Albert put the pipe down and fanned the smoke away. ‘Please, just leave me to think on all of this. Off with you.’
Quentin took this schoolboy’s dismissal without visibly flinching, though inwardly he was more crushed than seething. He had been shown up, proven to be an inexperienced lout, weak, inept, unworthy of the trust he had insisted on assuming, a bungling novice who had been sent to do a professional’s job.
He closed the door behind him, and stared across the office expanse. Miss Marr, answering the phone with her crisp voice, held her pencil poised above her notepad. Monica continued to flail away on her typewriter. Enid Sherrill, without so much as a glance at him, greeted a well-known writer of crime novels, a stout lady in a moulting fur coat. Quentin calculated the distance from his father’s office to his own door, not in feet, but miles, even years. Could he cross that room and become a man again? Could he ever deserve the partnership? Would it always be a gift unearned?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE INCONVENIENT WIFE
Quentin spent the journey to Oxford considering how, quite, he would tell Claire Carson that her husband’s ashes were in a black velvet box. He was still wincing from the barely veiled disdain in the eyes of Miss Marr and Miss Sherrill, even Monica, when word had quickly percolated round the office. Failure, Lout, Incompetent roiled, unspoken, around the firm.
He stepped off the train into the thick, chill fog that lay swathed over Oxford, and elected to walk to Summertown rather than take a cab, or the bus. Despite the winter weather Oxford seemed cheerful compared to London. No rubble among these stones, people on the street seemed less bent, intent and harried. Pretty girls in twos and threes laughed in passing, and mothers tugged at little children who still regarded passers-by with something like healthy curiosity. He smiled to see the students on bicycles, their black gowns flying out behind them, the ageing dons in their regalia. Were dons ever young? Oxford was resistant to change, and perhaps that was its great secret, one past merely grafted over another, as with geologic strata, change so slow one strata oozed into the next. There were differences, of course, but they were not immediately discernible. Nostalgia enveloped him as he passed by his old college, St John’s. His university years seemed part of his own geologic past, as though they had happened to someone else a hundred years ago.
Indeed, a hundred years before, the colleges slowly deemed their dons could marry, and the town changed forever in response. Summertown, north Oxford, prospered, populated with women and children, with new shops to serve these households, with schools to educate these children, and the families of cooks and housemaids and delivery boys who served these solid late-Victorian homes. Moving up the Woodstock Road, north Oxford had a very different air from the monastic confines of the colleges themselves. The streets still retained something of the era of Alice Liddell and Rhoda Broughton, of all the women who, over time, had eroded the ingrown, deeply masculine Oxonian way of life. The streets with their pleasing density of brick homes still exuded a late-Victorian mixture of high spirits and propriety. Quentin imagined families like the Ramsays of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse living in them, with all those scampering, rambunctious children. Thick black drainage pipes criss-crossed the fronts, like gnarled veins on aged hands. Many homes had been carved into flats. Occasionally one of these houses had an unkempt appearance, but most testified to comfort and correctness.
When he reached Polstead Road, he was happy to see that Claire’s did too. The brick house with its neo-Gothic touches was set back from the street, a small spate of lawn, some border shrubs and a gravelled drive with room for perhaps three cars; one of them was her Humber. His eye was drawn to the top floor where a swathe of windows filled with brilliant red geraniums, pressing up against the glass, contrasted wildly with the nutmeg-brown brick, and the mossy shingles on the roof. The red geraniums clamoured against the windows, streaking them with condensation, making a bright statement against the grey day.
A row of bells stood beside the front door; he rang the one that had a hasty Carson taped over it. No answer. He left Frank’s suitcase there by the door, though he kept his own leather case, and strolled to the front and waited.
He saw her walking, bundled against the chill, head down, her mind clearly elsewhere. She wore the same long black skirt, an odd, floppy velvet hat and a maroon coat. She was very nearly at the gate before she saw him. A smile wreathed her face. He took her hand in his, pleased to see she still wore his gloves. ‘Claire.’ He said her name with some pleasure. ‘Claire. I’m happy to see you.’
‘Oh, Quentin, you’re looking so well! So … I don’t know … different somehow! I’m just back from walking the girls to school. It’s just round the corner. Squirrel School, isn’t that the silliest name you ever heard? But it’s a wonderful school, really charming.’ He followed her up the three flights, letting the pleasures of her voice float over him. ‘And the girls are going to learn so much, and make friends and be so happy. They’re not happy at the moment. They did not want to move. You can imagine, all the freedoms they had out at Harrington, and here, well, the top floor is ours, and that’s it. It’s a flat after all.’
‘They feel constrained,’ he offered.
‘Yes, and leaving Pooh and Tigger behind, that was traumatic, and I’m afraid they’re still angry with me about the horse.’
‘The horse?’
‘You know, that old grey nag. They loved that horse. The knackers came for it. But what else could I do?’ She opened the door and ushered him into a spacious room where boxes and crates were haphazardly stacked on and around the furniture; chaos seemed to reign amid vases of drooping flower arrangements, some of them enormous unto garish. Potted geraniums filled the front windows. ‘This place belongs to Avery Ellsworth who teaches at, well, I can’t remember now, I get all the Oxford colleges confused. He’s gone to America, to Columbia? Columbus? I don’t know. He’s always so admired Frank’s work. He used to come out to Harrington just to talk to him, and then when he heard, he knew we couldn’t afford to go on living there, he insisted we move into Oxford and live here, nominal rent. We have the place for three years! It’s such a godsend! He considered it a privilege to contribute. He really said that! I know what you’re thinking, Quentin: has Claire really forgiven all those toadies fawning over Frank? And the answer is yes! Really, I’m not being a
snide cat about it. I mean it. All those people I so despised, they’ve been so kind to us, and I am grateful. I’ve had my share of humble pie.’
‘Yes,’ he said, knowing full well he would be heaping his own plate very soon with that same dish. ‘How goes the not smoking?’
‘Terrible, but I haven’t lapsed. Not yet anyway. When your life’s in a total uproar, it’s easier to quit; no daily routines, no habits. Take off your coat, and sit down, and put it anywhere. I’ll make us a cuppa.’ She draped her maroon coat on a hook, the hat too. She wore a thick, knitted sweater the colour of straw, probably one of Frank’s, he thought; it was too big for her and she kept pushing up the sleeves. Her hair was pulled away from her face, tied up high on her head, much of it escaping and framing her face. ‘Please, put yourself at ease, though I suppose it’s difficult with all this mess and upheaval, and all these famous floral tributes. Stale condolences. God, I despise all that stinking convention. And look at them! They’re dying, aren’t they? More dead and dying everywhere. Who invented such customs?’
‘I don’t think I know.’
A warm bit of laughter escaped her. ‘You are so serious, Quentin. So solid and rooted. You make me feel embarrassed. Of course I should be grateful people thought so well of Frank.’
‘I told you that you would not be alone.’
‘I’m just not one for gesture. That was Frank’s province.’ She talked to him from the tiny kitchen – the getting used to living in a small flat after the huge Harrington Hall, Professor Ellsworth having left their ration tickets for her, his wife’s passion for the geraniums, and the hope that Claire wouldn’t kill them – while Quentin wandered among the boxes and drooping floral tributes. The scent of dying lilies lay heavy on the air. He glanced at the cards (one of which read With Deepest Sympathies, Albert Castle and Enid Sherrill) and stepped over children’s toys. The chairs were deep and overstuffed, like the laps of Victorian nannies, and a copy of Kipling’s The Elephant’s Child lay, face flattened, on the tea table. A small wireless sat on a shelf beside a phonograph and stacks of records. Apparently Professor Ellsworth liked jazz. The pots of long, leggy geraniums sat on boards placed atop the radiators fronting the window. The flowers looked less dramatic from the inside, even a trifle limp. He stood at the windows and peered through them to the grey fog and the black and leafless branches.
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