Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

  ‘And say he’s sorry?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he replied, hating Michael all the more, hating the typescript in the office safe.

  ‘And ask my forgiveness?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you really think so, Kanga?’

  ‘Marry me, Roo. I thought this holiday would assuage all my longings, but it hasn’t. It’s made me hungrier, made me want more, desire more. Sometimes I think I’ll shrivel inside if I can’t see you, if I can’t …’

  She turned and pressed against him; discreetly she let her hand fall below his belt and stroked him. ‘You will never shrivel if I can help it.’ She kissed him again, and turned back to the loch and the castle.

  He flung an arm over her shoulders and they walked on. ‘I don’t fear anything except living apart from you. I’m stronger than I once was. Aren’t you? Haven’t we given each other that much? Shouldn’t we have the strength of our love?’

  ‘We do, love.’ She placed her left hand with its brilliant blue sapphire at his lips, and then kissed him gently. ‘I have your ring, I have your love, I have your trust, and you have mine.’

  ‘Then tell me you’ll marry me, and I’ll go back to London, and tell Florence it’s over.’

  ‘Florence is in St Ives.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Quentin—’ She shook her head ‘—I told you from the beginning … really, the beginning, when you came to Polstead Road that day and said there wasn’t any hope of our ever marrying, I told you I didn’t need to marry you to love you. I loved you then, I love you still, Kanga, but I don’t want to marry anyone. I will never remarry.’

  ‘Am I being punished for what Frank Carson did to you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t sulk. I hate sulking.’

  ‘I’m not! I’m asking a question.’

  ‘Then leave Frank out of this. You always bring him up when you want to quarrel.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘All right then. I do. Never mind him. I’ll get a divorce and we won’t get married. Will that solve it?’

  ‘Oh, you are impossible.’

  ‘Florence and the children can have everything. I’ll come live with you and commute to London. It won’t be so very different. Two days a week I work at home with you in any event. Look, I have the courage for this! Don’t you?’

  ‘What’s happened to you? All this fresh air has addled your brains. That, or you’re mad.’

  ‘Then I’ll be mad. Marry me. Do you want me to get down on one knee?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. Don’t you dare!’

  ‘I am foolish.’

  ‘I thought you were brave.’

  ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’ Quentin insisted. ‘Really. It’s all the unbrave dullards who live without love. Like those people with umbrellas to protect them from the sunshine. We’ve been living just like them.’ He got down on one knee.

  ‘Please! Get up! We’re not like them in the least.’

  ‘But we are! That’s how we’ve lived for ten years. There’s sunshine all around us and we’ve cowered under umbrellas. Maybe we had to then, in the beginning, but not any more. Look, we have sunshine all around us. Let’s crack the umbrellas in half and step into the sunlight.’ He stood and enfolded her in his arms.

  ‘The sunlight won’t last. It never does.’ She gave him a noisy kiss on the lips, and turned to go back towards the picnic blanket. ‘Let’s go find a hotel.’

  He followed her, his mood dampened but not destroyed. He would keep at it, erode her objections, like the wind and the rain had worn down all those old standing stones; he would convince her that now was the time for them to free themselves. And, not incidentally, he remembered with a small thump of conscience, to be able to face the slings and arrows of Sybil’s book, and Michael’s defection together, a united front, as husband and wife.

  ‘One last picture,’ she called out, turning towards him.

  ‘I’m not human architecture.’

  ‘Of course not. You’re my one true love. Now smile for me.’

  For all the thousands, perhaps millions, of photographs Claire Carson took over a twenty-year career, few survived from early on, save for the Umbrellas of Appin, which she always deemed one of her best. It was one of twelve in her first showing at a small Oxford gallery, and among her most famous even years later when she had her much-lauded 1976 exhibit at London’s Excelsior gallery. As a photographer, however, Claire Carson had little interest in portraiture, in people or faces, so there were but a handful of family pictures among her effects – these few of Quentin in Scotland among them – when she died in a private plane crash over the eastern Mediterranean in 1979.

  PART V

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘SOME OF THESE DAYS’

  Quentin approached Number 11 quite early that June morning, so early the day still felt fresh, the air not yet veiled with exhaust fumes. From an open window above an art gallery, someone was playing A Hard Day’s Night, Side A, as Quentin very well knew from hearing Bobby and Eleanor play that album down to a hiccupping nub. The smell of coffee roasting at the new coffee bar down the street floated over Mayfair, and he nodded to the baker’s delivery boy lofting his trays of croissants and muffins. Across the way Chinese waiters unloaded silvery fish for the Ming restaurant. At the architects’ firm, Number 12, a sleepy-looking clerk picked up milk bottles gleaming in the early June sunlight. As Quentin opened the door to number 11, Sergeant, the day porter, stepped out, and scooped up the milk bottles in his arms. ‘Mr Castle! You’re early, sir! Miss Marr’s already picked up your post. She’s always the earliest.’

  Quentin thanked him, and popped up the staircase with his usual alacrity, meeting Miss Marr on the second-floor landing where she rested on her cane. Her grey hair still bore the neat, crimped imprints of last night’s curlers. Her dark suit still had cat hairs. Her beige blouse still carried a whiff of yesterday’s perspiration She held a purse, a shopping bag and clutched to her narrow chest a large, bound bundle of heavy manuscripts and many letters.

  ‘You should let Sergeant collect the post, and bring it up. That’s why we have him.’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘Well, let me take those,’ he offered, but she clutched them tighter. ‘I insist, Miss Marr.’ And he really did. He started up the stairs, but then realized she was still resting on this second landing. He came back and took the shopping bag from her. The scent of stale egg salad wafted from it. ‘Let’s walk together.’

  ‘I like to take my time,’ she said with some asperity. ‘You go ahead.’

  ‘I’ll wait with you.’ Walking at her side, and over the metronomic thump of her cane on the steps, the sound echoing down from the skylights, he realized how stooped she was, how he towered over her. He suddenly wondered how old she was. If he was almost forty, she must be sixty or thereabouts. She seemed much older, a dry, hollow husk of a woman.

  ‘I have to come in early. I don’t like to be seen to be so slow,’ she said, holding the rail with her other hand. ‘Gives those new girls ideas, Lucy and Madge and Becky.’ These girls were typists; Monica had long since left, and was the mother of three. ‘You know every one of ‘em thinks she can replace me. The chits.’

  ‘No one can replace you.’

  ‘You say that,’ she grumbled, ‘but it’ll happen one day. Why are you so early today? You don’t usually come in till after nine.’

  ‘Well, I have work. And … I’m expecting someone.’

  ‘Gigi Fischer.’

  ‘Yes.’ He flushed slightly, hoping that his face did not betray his anticipation or his anxiety. Though he and Gigi had exchanged frequent letters, telegrams, telex, even transatlantic telephone phone calls in their many business dealings, he had not actually seen her in these fifteen years. Quentin used his key to open Castle Literary Ltd’s door. He put the shopping bag and the stack of envelopes on the desk. He started to untie the strings that bound up the post.

&nb
sp; Miss Marr took it from his hands. ‘We each have our duties, Mr Castle, and the post is mine.’ She gave him a look he could only think of, oddly, as triumph. ‘I want to bring to your attention that young Mr Pennypacker took a rather over-long lunch on Tuesday.’

  ‘Perhaps he had an appointment.’

  ‘Perhaps he did, Mr Castle, but he did not check it with me. Did he check it with you?’

  ‘I wasn’t in on Tuesday.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I’ll speak with him.’

  ‘I confirmed yesterday with The Gay Hussar in Soho,’ Miss Marr said. ‘They are holding your favourite table for you and Miss Fischer. The contracts for Mrs Partridge’s new book are typed and on your desk. Do you wish me to hold all your calls when Miss Fischer is here? As I recall,’ she added, not taking her eyes from his face, ‘you and she were quite close at one time.’

  And that’s how Quentin knew that Miss Marr had not forgotten Gigi’s indiscreet postcard.

  Quentin was unprepared for the emotions that washed over him as Gigi Fischer blew into Castle Literary, lilting the very air with expensive French cologne. For a woman of thirty-five, her dress daringly skimmed above her knees, and she had the shapely, tanned, smooth legs to carry it off. High-heeled sandals, and no stockings. Gigi’s hair, an auburn colour not found in nature, and cut sleek, fell forward stylishly. Her eyelashes were astonishingly long and unashamedly false. The gems in her rings and her bracelet were large and unashamedly genuine. She was very chic. More than chic. Everything at sharp angles, and not a bit of frou-frou. She was Mod. Fab. These were words Quentin knew from Mary and Catherine Carson, who prided themselves on being Mod and Fab, fresh, new, and absolutely 1965.

  Brief, audible surprise rippled among his employees as he walked through the low gate, took her in his arms and kissed her cheek. ‘You look beautiful.’

  Gigi, ever assessive in matters of style, told him he had aged well. ‘You look every inch the British man of letters, except you’re taller and better-looking.’

  Quentin laughed, and collected himself to play host, and introduce her to the faces to go with names she might already know. ‘Gigi Fischer – or do you prefer your married name?’

  ‘Fischer is fine. That stays the same. Married names can change. I’m on my third husband.’

  ‘Miss Georgina Fischer, the famous Los Angeles film agent, this is Miss Adeline Marr. Miss Marr has run this office admirably for many years.’

  Miss Marr managed a stiff smile and asked if they would like tea.

  ‘Only if you have a bathroom nearby,’ said Gigi. ‘Tea always makes me pee like a racehorse.’

  Miss Marr blanched. ‘Madge,’ said Miss Marr, and instantly one of the young typists got up and went into the small room at the back that served as staffroom and loo.

  Quentin introduced Gigi to the other new typists, Lucy and Becky, their machines side by side on a long table. Castle Literary’s premises were even more crowded, stem to stern, floor-to-ceiling shelves, and every drawer and cupboard crammed with files and books and manuscripts.

  There were many more author photographs in the constellation on the wall above Miss Marr’s desk, some in colour. He knocked on the door of what had once been Enid Sherrill’s sole domain, which now housed Richard, Angela and Liz, and introduced Gigi to them, and did the same in what was once his old narrow office. The new accountant worked at the desk in front of the window; the place in the closet was occupied by the newest, the novice agent, young Gordon Pennypacker.

  All that done, Quentin led her into his own office. Gigi had an assessive look round and announced, ‘The place looks just as I pictured it.’ She put her handbag and a large alligator briefcase on the low table between the leather chairs.

  ‘The desk is neater than it was in my father’s time,’ Quentin replied, ‘but we have a fine literary tradition and I saw no reason to change that.’ He sat in one of the leather chairs, leaned back and allowed himself to bask in Gigi’s sunny presence.

  Gigi wandered to the mantel. ‘I never took you for a rock collector.’ She lifted a nondescript stone.

  ‘That’s from Kilimanjaro, given to my father by John McVicar. No one reads McVicar any more, but he was a renowned adventure writer once.’

  ‘And who is this framed letter from?’

  ‘Sydney Thaxton.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’ She pointed to the framed photo of a jaunty soldier. ‘Robert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was a handsome devil.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘So are you, you know. I’m serious. You’re much better-looking now than you were all those years ago. What’s your secret?’

  ‘Prayer.’

  ‘No pictures of the wife and kiddies?’ asked Gigi with an arched eyebrow.

  ‘I keep my personal and my professional life separate.’ In this office there was no African violet, no aspidistra.

  ‘How are Florence, Eleanor and young Robert?’

  ’Fine.’

  She waited for him to go on, and when he refused to, she gave a trilling laugh. ‘Oh, Quentin, you slay me! You always set yourself to a standard no one else would ever try to live up to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that I wish I’d been smarter. I know now I didn’t recognize a really good man when I met him.’

  ‘You don’t mean poor Don, the writer?’

  ‘I mean you, you ass! If I’d had any sense, I would have never let you leave California.’

  ‘I was married, even then. Hard to believe, but true.’

  Gigi sighed. ‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Oh well, you still changed my life.’

  ‘Every lover likes to be told that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be an agent without you. All those days in Baja, listening to you talk, I thought, why couldn’t I do that here in LA? Sure, there were a few such agencies already, mostly run by geezers. Why not try? After all, I was Roy’s stepdaughter and people were afraid to treat me like shit. Who would have ever thought that one day a man like Roy would be obsolete, and I would be a powerful agent?’

  ‘I never doubted you. You are still the Girl of the Golden West.’

  ‘You did once call me a shallow twit.’

  ‘I misspoke. Anyway, I think we both changed in Mexico.’ He gave her an indulgent grin. ‘I still like to say it sometimes. Baja.’

  Gigi strolled around the office, glanced back, overtly flirtatious, and knowing. ‘We could give it a rerun some afternoon this week, say tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘Thanks. I’m flattered. But no.’

  ‘An old married man, I take it.’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it. You and I were a golden moment. That kind of magic? No one gets that twice. It would be a mistake to think we could. I am not a man to tempt fate,’ he said, though he had been tempting fate with Claire Carson for fifteen years. He thought, idly, that’s what makes fate tempting, to have some forbidden, lyrical presence, like Claire, love that both buoys and roots. Magical.

  ‘Quentin?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Excuse me, Gigi. What were you saying about sainthood? I thought you were Jewish.’

  ‘What does that matter? I’m sacrificing myself.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ he chuckled.

  ‘I’m atoning. For my sins I am now a stepmother, and my teenage stepdaughter, Kathy, just wouldn’t let up. Oh, London is just the swingingest place on the planet, next to the surfing club at Malibu, naturally, oh Daddy, we have to go! Phil, my husband, gave in, naturally, though he couldn’t be bothered to come. So here I am. Doris is with us, supervising the shopping, and as we speak the girls are using their daddies’ money to devastate the boutiques of Carnaby Street, and raise the gross national product of Great Britain. They came with empty suitcases to take home Mary Quant clothes. We have tickets for Lionel Bart’s Oliver, and something or another from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and we are signed up for the Beatles Tour in Liverpool. Yes, I am being dragged up t
o Liverpool, of all places, and I have to listen to three girls singing “Yeah Yeah Yeah” and giggling constantly. I have been to see A Hard Day’s Night three times. I told you, atoning.’

  ‘Three girls?’

  ‘When word got out that I was taking Kathy, my nieces insisted I bring them too.’

  ‘The Lotus’s children?’

  Gigi nodded and rolled her eyes. ‘Doris insists we’re all one big happy family. Holidays are gruesome, of course. Some of us are Christian, some are Jewish, no one gives a good goddamn anyway, but—’ She shrugged ‘—it makes Doris happy.’

  Madge knocked with the tea tray and put it on the low table between the leather chairs. Quentin poured the tea and passed a cup to Gigi. She lit a cigarette, and he found her an ashtray. One change he had made in Albert’s office was to rid the place of pipe stands, pipe cleaners, tobacco tins, ashtrays and wooden matches, though he kept a vase full of matchbooks from expensive London restaurants.

  She blew out a plume of smoke. ‘The girls can’t understand why I hated London so much in ’49. I can’t explain how it was just so …’

  ‘I think your expression was “pinched and nasty”.’

  ‘Oh, don’t hold that against me, Quentin. It was just so dark, somehow, all that ruination amid cheerio, pip pip, weak tea, warm beer, and Eddie with his fishy breath. I heard he married some Australian heiress, by the way, no doubt knee deep in sheep shit and wool money.’

  ‘You should thank him. He did introduce you to the MG.’

  ‘Yes, and I still have that MGT. My first love and wages for my first job.’ She winked. ‘I also have an MGA, a ’58, along with a Porsche, which I think is overrated, and the Triumph. I had to build another garage for all my sports cars, and the mechanic bills are bankrupting me. They’re fussy little buggers, the cars. The mechanics too. But what can I do? The damn cars are always breaking down. Roy always said they’re worse than poodles.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Roy.’

  ‘You probably weren’t, but it’s nice of you to say so. It was a shock. Five years ago now, hard to believe. He just keeled over from a heart attack. Totally unexpected. I made my peace with Roy. I’ve always been glad of that, but he and I were never quite the same after the whole Frank Carson fiasco. He always treated me fine, but …’ She smoked reflectively. ‘I couldn’t … you know?’