Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  ‘How did Frank take the failure of Hay Days?’

  ‘Badly. It accelerated his drinking. He blamed Sybil. He was angry with her. I kept reminding him of his own stupidity. That was probably a mistake. We had terrible rows. Then, I don’t know how, or exactly when, but he reconnected with Sybil in London. At some point, she gave him the key to her flat. He brought other women there, I’m sure of it. Served her right. When he went to America, honestly, at first I was glad. At least Sybil wouldn’t have him any more. I was certain when he came home, we could … we would …we always had …’ They were nearing the Savoy; she stopped walking, and turned to him, and again for a man unaccustomed to reading women’s eyes, he saw the pain submerged in her pride. ‘You see, yet another of Frank’s stories of a desperate woman and an errant man. I was so inconvenient, he not only didn’t come home, he quit writing to me at all.’

  ‘You are not inconvenient to me,’ he said, taking her arm.

  The Savoy maitre d’, noting that the lady was in trousers, was about to pluck a few choice phrases from a repertoire of rejection until Quentin said Lady Sybil Dane expected them. All was well.

  Quentin followed Claire, admiring the way she sailed through the Savoy, wearing her unconventional trousers, and floppy velvet hat, confident, uncaring, perhaps even unaware of how beautiful and unique she was amid this sea of overdressed privilege. Quentin remembered Gigi Fischer striding into Schwab’s, consciously creating an effect. For Claire, the effect she created was effortless, a spontaneous expression of who she was. He wished he had met her in a Broadstairs pub fifteen years before.

  Lady Sybil Dane too exuded an air of singularity, wearing deep, unbecoming mourning. Though she was now at least fifty, her great dark eyes, her jet-black hair had not deserted her. She was clearly surprised to see Claire with a man until Claire introduced him as Frank’s literary agent, Quentin Castle.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sybil in her gravelly voice, waving her cigarette.

  ‘You might have confused me with my father, Albert,’ said Quentin politely.

  ‘I rather doubt that,’ replied Sybil, letting her unimpressed appraisal of Quentin bubble beneath her words. ‘You are the junior partner, the one who went to California.’ She folded her menu and turned to Claire. ‘I hear the veal is very good.’

  Hoping he could quell the flush of shame rising in his cheeks, Quentin ordered a civilized martini. Claire asked for a gin and tonic. Lady Sybil gave her attention entirely to Claire, insisting on driving her back to Oxford after lunch, and hopes that grief had not sapped all her strength. Not until their meals arrived did Sybil Dane turn again to Quentin. ‘Your father has been renowned for his literary taste for thirty years, so you have a lot to live up to.’ Her tone left no doubt that she thought him unequal to the task.

  And yet within five years Albert Castle desperately wanted to retire, though he told no one, not even Margaret, the true reason he wished to retreat from the firm he had founded and sustained, the business he had loved. His son – the weak-eyed son who never seemed to have much promise or any charm or even ability, the son, in short, who was Not Robert – had eclipsed the father.

  Quentin’s handling of the estate of Francis Carson was shrewd and exemplary. The posthumous novel The Inconvenient Wife reinstated the writer’s reputation that had been diminished by Hay Days. Published in 1954, The Inconvenient Wife sold well, sold internationally, and save for the grumbling of younger, more astringent critics, the book reaped elegiac, even ecstatic reviews. All that glory reflected on Quentin. And yet Albert had instigated, nurtured, fostered, advanced Carson’s talents when no one had heard of him. Albert could hardly bear it. Even worse, Louisa Partridge, once Albert’s lover, treated him as one would a friend’s old, nasty dog: a pat on the head, a kind hello, but one wouldn’t want to get too close. She reserved her respect and affection for Quentin.

  Albert finally did retire in 1956. Quentin moved into his father’s spacious office, sparking a colossal fight with Enid Sherrill, who departed Castle Ltd. She started her own agency, taking all her authors with her.

  Quentin was glad to see her go. Castle Literary Ltd flourished. Not only did they still have the cachet of tradition, but Quentin proved himself – quite apart from his father – a man with daring literary instincts. Quentin took on, advocated for adventurous writers whose colonial experience of Empire was searingly different from, say, Kipling’s. The voices, the views of these writers undercut the old imperial complacency and upended literary criticism, enlarged the scope of writers in English. Moreover, Quentin was envied for his lucrative contacts with American film producers (and American film agents, like Georgina Fischer). But it was the story of Apricot Olive Lemon that raised him to fame, a story that came to have the same smoothness as Thaxton and the Second-Best Umbrella, as it was told over and over, by writers drinking pints at pubs, by other agents over bad red at wine bars, over martinis at editors’ luncheons, and later – decades later – fodder for chatter among young editorial assistants riding in lifts to ozone levels of glassy office buildings in sterile corporate parks. The story testified not simply to Quentin’s acumen, but to his audacity. Who else would have thought of so unconventional a plan, and made a fortune for the author and the agent?

  The four editors who came to lunch at Louisa’s that day walked into a honeyed snare. Louisa created an enchanting moment: for that afternoon these four men were transported to the proverbial Other Country, the realm one visits in fiction. All four responded as they should have and made Louisa offers, very low, given the experimental nature of the book, and of course, the prevalent austerity everywhere. Quentin for his part negotiated up, not for the immediate offer, but for the percentage. A young editor finally agreed to Quentin’s terms for a twenty per cent royalty rate (unheard of then or now) for Louisa. The book was published in the spring of 1951; critical reception was mixed. Some brayed that Louisa Partridge was a traitor to The Book of British Housekeeping, which they still admired. Some saw it as ludicrous, and quoted the recipes only to poke fun at them. (‘Vermouth to moisten the stuffing for a roasted chicken? Preposterous.’) But some, an eclectic, influential few saw it for what it was: the first clarion call to a post-war world. Louisa’s tart, sharp, clean prose, her evocations of culinary experience-yet-to-come struck some as an antidote not simply to the grey pall of 1951 Britain, but an antidote to both gloom and nostalgia. Apricot Olive Lemon sold slowly at first, but it sold well, and it picked up momentum. The book did not reflect, it predicted. It has never been out of print, from that day to this. It was followed by six more volumes, all selling well and rapturously reviewed, and countless collections of essays, minor journalism and myriad magazine pieces, but nothing as seminal and important as Apricot Olive Lemon. In 1964 Louisa Partridge was awarded an OBE. Her dear friend, and longtime literary agent, Quentin Castle, escorted her to the ceremony.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FOOTPATH TO FOLLY

  Albert, as the head of Castle Literary Ltd, received the black-bordered invitation to the memorial service for the late Francis Carson, at ten in the morning, Monday, 6 March 1950 at the Woodlands parish church. Luncheon at Woodlands to follow. Albert intended to go alone, but Miss Sherrill reminded him that Mrs Carson might look askance, even take offence if Quentin were not there. The firm wished to keep Carson’s estate. Grumbling, Albert could see the wisdom in this. Then Miss Sherrill announced that she too would be going. Albert objected, but Miss Sherrill asked no man’s permission.

  They drove to Oxfordshire the night before, Albert at the wheel of his trusty Morris. Miss Marr was able to book only two rooms at the local inn, a dreary place with dusty stuffed pheasants on high shelves. The three ate an abysmal supper in a dining room where the walls were dotted with hunting scenes featuring lots of bloody animals. The stuffy, low-ceilinged chamber Quentin shared with his father was also decorated with paintings of bloody animals. Quentin’s stomach troubled him all night, and Albert snored like a bellows, so much so that Que
ntin more than once had to get out of his own bed, go to his father and shake his shoulder to shut him up.

  Breakfast was, if anything, worse than the supper. Quentin took dry toast and tea. As they were about to leave for the church, Miss Sherrill could not find the gloves to go with her navy-blue suit. She fussed and flapped, unhinged because no lady could go to a church without gloves. She returned to her room and insisted they search the car. Quentin swore under his breath. By the time she found the errant gloves, and they drove to the church, and parked the car, they were very nearly late. They stood in the doorway while the organist filled the church with lugubrious music, and wondered where they might sit. The pews were packed.

  In that back row many bottoms squeezed more tightly together so Quentin, Albert and Enid could sit. Since the church was unheated, the close-pressed human warmth was not unwelcome. From his place at the back, and across a sea of black, Quentin could only see the hats of Claire and Lady Sybil where they sat with Sir Sanford, and presumably, the three children in the front pew, reserved for the family.

  The vicar stepped into the pulpit, raised his hands, prayed, and addressed them as brothers and sisters; he began with praise for the deceased, farewell to one beloved of all, our brother, Francis, with copious references to his genius, his goodness, his many merits. Quentin found the whole exercise excruciating. Though he had been uncomplainingly raised C of E all his life, he was suddenly impatient, irritated beyond endurance by the well-known phrases and responses, by the rhetorical lauding of a man who, for all the good he had written, had strewn many lives with pain. Quentin’s included. When required, Quentin stood and sat, and sang with the rest of them, but bereavement for Francis Carson, like sleep the night before, eluded him. His mind wandered, and his stomach was upset. The vicar laced his remarks with biblical references reminding everyone there would come the day when death would be as nothing, and love would triumph over all; he invoked the ubiquitous Corinthians, verse 13. Oh God, Quentin thought, was ever there a set of verses so often abused? And yet, to Quentin’s surprise, these words of comfort and farewell clearly moved people in the congregation. He heard snuffling, and many dabbed their eyes with hankies, including, of all people, Enid Sherrill. Disdainfully Quentin Castle spent the service reflecting uncharitably on Frank Carson, though acknowledging his own hypocrisy: how else would Quentin have met Claire? How else would he have met Gigi? He knew that in some fundamental way both of these women had exerted a lunar tug upon his life, though quite what that tug was, he did not know. Expect great change? They had brought him great change whether he liked it or not, wanted it or not. He had not wanted it. And yet, he cherished it. He thought of love and death, and bits of Donne, the master of love and death, floated through his mind, chased away when, beside him, his father moved uneasily with a gas pain which he then discreetly released. Quentin turned his head. At the last amen, Quentin rose with the rest of them to sing the final hymn, ‘Abide With Me’, while the front rows filed out first.

  Michael Carson led, perhaps in his eagerness to escape. As he walked up the aisle Michael shot Quentin a look of resentment, detestation, so pure, intense and unguarded it could only have been on the face of a boy. Catherine and Mary, in lovely new dresses of dark-blue taffeta, held hands and seemed pleased by the novelty of the experience. Quentin assumed they had grown up heathen and probably church itself seemed a place to play-act. Sir Sanford, corpulent, bald, adorned with medals, looked pleased rather than saddened, probably happy for Sybil’s sake, at the turnout. On his arm, Lady Sybil Dane, her black hair sleek under a smart hat, her black clothing belted at her thick waist, her dark eyes downcast, looked every inch the grieving mistress, if not the widow. She carried a tiny bouquet of snowdrops tied with a black ribbon. Claire followed behind them. In a simple sheath she looked like a tall black flower, regal, Quentin thought, like a black iris. Her veiled hat concealed her bright hair, which was tucked up high and tight in a French roll. She too carried white snowdrops in black ribbon. As she passed him, she raised the slight veil, and in those few seconds, her blue eyes were bleak and eloquent with pain.

  A long cortege of cars drove up to Woodlands, the Danes’ grand, many-winged Georgian mansion, the golden stone glowing in the cold noon light. Overworked servants greeted them, directing guests to ascend the broad staircase. As they handed off their coats and hats, Quentin and Albert and Enid mingled with the publishing professions, with Frank’s European and American publishers and translators, with other writers, artists, critics, the entire editorial staff of Selwyn and Archer, editors from other houses, editors of defunct arts journals, and assorted other literati and hangers-on, nearly all of them men (the few women were of the mothy-sweater sort, indifferent to their looks and tetchy on their politics). The hall was vast and Quentin’s gaze was drawn to the high overhead dome where fat, glowing cherubs cavorted with nymphs, their flesh so opulent, their breasts seemed to hang pendulous from the gilt dome, their rosy nipples like jewels. All along the walls hung massive works of Elizabethan and seventeenth-century art, portraits, landscapes and scenes of antique grandeur, portrayals of classical myth and literature, all in thick gilded frames, all this grandeur now gracing the home of Sir Sanford Dane, once a scrappy Manchester lad.

  Miss Sherrill remarked as they walked up the vast marble staircase that one didn’t see too many houses of this splendor so well maintained any more. At the open doors of the elaborate gold and green drawing room with its six Venetian chandeliers illuminating gilded furniture, stood uniformed waiters bearing trays of drinks. No further enticement was necessary. For writers and artists free drinks and free food were cause for celebration, no matter who had to die.

  Theirs was a genial profession, and Albert Castle, certainly, was known to be amiable, affable even in these sombre circumstances. Albert became more delightful the more he drank, the more they all drank. Miss Sherrill, who drank only sherry, and that in sips, staked herself beside Albert like a pole to a patch of runner beans. Over years of social occasions when Albert waxed indiscreet, Miss Sherrill had evolved a quick, almost invisible jab to which he responded like Pavlov’s dog. Her elbow was at the ready as they stood in a small clutch of compatriots and competitors. The whole high-ceilinged room echoed with a respectful drone broken here and there with bits of stifled laughter. It was, after all, a sad occasion.

  Quentin stationed himself quite alone, in a far corner before a phalanx of enormous potted palms. Perhaps if need be, like Tarzan, he could run into the jungle. But first he took a drink from a passing waiter who carried trays of sherry and whisky. Quentin bolted his first whisky, and felt its burn and its tingling in his veins almost immediately. He signalled the waiter for another.

  From where he stood Quentin could look across the room at Claire and Sybil and Michael, who remained stationary while people swarmed around them. He watched as Sybil introduced Michael to everyone, her arm draped protectively on his shoulders. Michael looked miserable, twitching as though his fine suit of clothes itched, or perhaps to shrug off Sybil’s protective hand. Get used to it, lad, thought Quentin; she is paying your school fees, and she’s got you now. He watched Claire nod, smile, nod, smile, moving like an iris in the wind, responding to outside forces, the effort clearly taxing her patience, perhaps her strength, but not her innate dignity. The spontaneity he always so prized in her was utterly eclipsed. Oh Frank, Quentin thought, what an ass you were. What kind of fool trades Claire Carson for Mavis Ryan? For Sybil Dane?

  ‘A sad loss, eh, Castle?’ said the managing editor from Selwyn and Archer.

  ‘Are we here to bury Caesar or to praise him?’ Quentin replied.

  ‘I hear they’ve turned the film Some of These Days into some sort of farce.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, I heard it from your father. You went there, you saw it.’

  ‘I went, I saw, but I did not conquer,’ Quentin said with ironic gravity.

  ‘Tell me, is Linda St John really that beautiful?’
r />   Quentin snatched yet another Scotch from the tray of a passing waiter. ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Must have been a jolly old shock to you to see they’d cremated him.’

  ‘Oh, will you just bloody shut up!’

  The editor moved away, but Quentin was joined at his jungle outpost by others of the publishing fraternity, each of whom had sympathies and opinions. Quentin had neither. He drank, and listened, unamused, to anecdotes of Francis Carson’s capacity for alcohol, and his gifts with inciting women into bed. The stories were legion. Time for another whisky.

  The two Carson girls were playing hide and seek among the guests, and wreaking hell among the waiters with their darting, shrieking back and forth. The youngest, Mary, barrelled into Quentin’s knees. He knelt and caught her, and the collision spilled a bit of his drink on her blue taffeta dress.

  She stared at him intently. ‘I hate you!’ and she was off again.

  ‘Does no one discipline those children?’ asked an agent from Watt. ‘They’re heathens.’

  ‘They’re little girls,’ snapped Quentin, ‘and you should be damn glad they’re happy.’

  The voices in the room were louder now; laughter was more frequent, the occasional guffaw so loud it echoed up and rattled the Venetian chandeliers. Political discussions too broke out here and there, grew heated as various left-wing factions argued finer points of socialism and the Soviet Union. Thick banners of cigarette smoke wafted up. Quentin wondered if Lady Sybil and Sir Sanford had quite anticipated the effect of all this whisky before lunch on a crowd of people of the ink- slinging trades.