But these letters? What storm did they brew? One, he feared, closer to the heart.
Would he discover that Claire had lied to him? That she alone had written An Inconvenient Wife beginning to end? She said she had typed it, and Quentin had no reason not to believe her. September Street, of course, was another matter altogether. He took off his glasses and pinched the bones of his nose, trying to remember how they had agreed that Claire should write another posthumous Carson novel using her own experience – the orphaned girl, the bedridden grandmother, the lecherous uncle – and pass it off as Frank’s. Had they actually agreed? He could not remember. But Quentin could not forget that he had colluded in that fraud, beginning to end.
At the time it had not seemed so very heinous. And no one, not even the negative reviewers, seemed to doubt the novel was pure Francis Carson. Now, five years after its publication, Quentin regretted being so easily complicit. He could be ruined if the fraud were ever found out. He had risked not only his own reputation but the nearly half-century reputation of the firm his father had built. That fear never quite left him. Like his peptic troubles. He opened the drawer, found his stomach pills, and took two to settle himself. ‘If you read these letters, you ass,’ he advised himself gravely, ‘and if it turns out that they are An Inconvenient Wife …’
What else might she have lied about? Why would she not have told him the truth? Oh, maybe not at the time, so soon after Frank died. He could forgive that. He could forgive her just about anything. He loved her. But why had she not eventually confessed the truth of it? If it were the truth that she had written An Inconvenient Wife on her own, not Frank at all …
What would that mean to their union?
They’d been together so long now. They were so close, even if they were not wed. Claire had steadfastly refused to marry him, and he had finally given up, but they had shared so much, their personal lives, their professional lives, raising the girls. He knew he should not read these letters. It would be an invasion. A breach of trust. He put them away and opened Frank’s script for Some of These Days.
Perhaps an hour later a sharp knock sounded at the door, and a ruddy, stocky young man burst in. ‘Miss Marr said you wanted to see me.’
‘Well, she misspoke, Pennypacker. I don’t. Leave and close the door.’
One by one the typewriters in the outer office fell silent and he heard the staff bidding each other goodnight, the click of the lock when the last of them left. He finished reading the script of Some of These Days, and looked up, aware of the ghost of Frank Carson. Present somehow. Here. Friend and nemesis these fifteen years, the enigmatic ghost silently beseeched him, neither mocking nor compassionate, only questioning, perplexed. And that’s when Quentin admitted to himself that neither trust nor courtesy kept him from reading Claire’s letters. Fear. He feared that if these letters were as desperate, ardent, and shameless as Gigi said, he would know, for certain, that Claire never had, and never would, love him as she had once loved Francis Carson.
The large envelope lay before him. To read or not to read? That was the question. None of it was nobler in the mind, all of it was rancour to the heart. Quentin had anchored his life and his love to Claire, and these letters could leave him unmoored forever. He sat there quietly, facing the greatest risk he had ever taken, feeling something of what McVicar must have felt on scaling the heights that killed him.
Someone, perhaps in the art gallery across the way, put on A Hard Day’s Night again, and now that the working day was over, they turned it up loud. The music echoed between the buildings, filling old Mayfair with the Mod and Fab. Quentin, his head in his hands, listened. ‘If I Fell’ warbled out. Hearing the lyrics, the lover’s aching questions, he opened the envelope and tumbled the letters across his desk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DEATH OF THE SPARROW
Outside the Oxford station she sat behind the wheel of the Mini, deeply engrossed in reading, and did not see him approach the car. When he opened the door, she tossed the paperback in the back seat, which was awash in books and magazines, grocery bags and empty film cans, the usual Claire-chaos. She put her reading glasses atop her head; the girls had talked her into a short haircut three months before and it was growing out. She wore a jaunty summer dress of some light material, green threads like stems through a pink design, sleeveless; her bare arms were tanned from time outside in the garden, and the sapphire ring gleamed on her left hand.
Claire gave him a brief connubial kiss. ‘Why do you look so glum, Kanga? I thought Gigi Fischer was in London yesterday. She ought to have cheered you up.’
‘I didn’t sleep with her if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘I’m not asking.’
‘She offered.’
Claire chuckled softly as she put the car in gear and pulled away. ‘I’m sure she did. What did you tell her?’
‘That it was a golden moment that couldn’t be repeated.’
‘That was kind of you, poetic, really, but it doesn’t explain why you’re cranky. I know you, Kanga, and you’re hiding something.’
‘Mary came by the office yesterday and met Gigi.’
Claire paused at this. ‘Did Gigi make some catty remark about Frank?’
‘On the contrary, she was the soul of tact.’
‘Well, that isn’t something anyone usually says about Gigi Fischer, is it?’ She glanced over at him, but he was looking straight ahead.
‘Mary said you wrote me that you didn’t want to be doing any more editing. I never received such a letter. Why not?’
‘I have no idea why you didn’t get it. It’s not the first letter of mine to go missing.’
‘That’s not what I’m asking. Why have you decided not to edit anything else? And why did you feel you had to write me to say so?’
She shrugged. ‘I wanted to be clear. I’m done with the literary life. No more books. I don’t have to give a damn about literature or reputation or the critics any longer. I’m concentrating on my own career, on photography.’
‘Fine, but why did you feel you had to write, some sort of formal notice?’
‘Oh, you’re just so cranky today, Kanga. Why make the trip if you’re going to be cross?’
‘Mary said you thought I was sulking. I’m not.’
‘Mary is telling tales out of school. She can be quite the big mouth.’
‘She’s just a girl, Claire. She’s excited.’
‘About what?’
‘Life, acting, London!’ He felt a twinge of guilt for keeping their secrets from Claire.
‘You see more of Mary and Catherine than I do. They hardly ever come home.’
‘Well, they live in London now. Of course I see them.’ Quentin watched the blue-green smear of summer pass by as she drove up the Banbury Road to Summertown; the view was balm to his eyes, though his heart was troubled.
Linton Road was closer to the river Cherwell, and unlike Polstead Road, these solid Victorian-Gothic houses were not, or not yet, carved into flats. Claire’s ample three-storey home had tall hedges for privacy from the street. She pulled the Mini behind the hedges and the gravel crunched under her tyres. Claire had bought this fine house with the American insurance money and the sale of Harrington Hall. An Inconvenient Wife paid for a substantial remodel, and September Street had paid for a darkroom and a studio for Claire.
Quentin used his own key on the door, and stepped into the airy hall. The kitchen had a wide bank of windows looking out into a garden where – though they had laughed themselves silly about getting Rosamund to design it – Claire had lavished time, money and vision to make it beautiful in all seasons. Now, in the high flush of midsummer, the delphiniums stood like tall blue sentinels at the back, apple trees evenly spaced around the perimeter, and flowering laburnum drooped golden flowers. A few chairs and a creaky wicker table sat under a wisteria arbour where the late purple blooms spindled. He put his leather case on the tiled floor, loosed his tie and took off his coat. ‘Where’s the d
og?’ he asked, unaccustomed to the silence.
She took two grocery bags to the counter. ‘I gave her away. To a good family, don’t worry.’
‘But why? Mary and Catherine will be devastated!’
‘Mary and Catherine live in London now, as you pointed out. I can’t be keeping a dog just to amuse them when they come to visit.’
‘But I thought you liked the dog. She was company for you.’
‘I’ve had a year here now, alone, since Mary left, and for the first time, really, in my whole life, I’m not responsible for someone else. Not even the dog. I’ve always had to be looking after someone. Before Michael and Mary and Catherine, it was Frank, before Frank it was grotty Granny, before her I had a bunch of younger siblings. But now, I look around at my life and I think, Claire, you could do something!’ She filled the kettle and lit the gas beneath it.
‘You already do something.’ He pointed to the rows of photographs laid out on the table. Her photographs in frames lined the walls.
‘We have to talk about this.’ She sat down across from him and took his hands in hers. ‘When I ran off with Frank, I was completely prepared to do whatever he wanted, whatever I could do to get his work into the world. I kicked up my heels in the chorus line. I typed all day when I’d been up all night. I was his wife, mistress, muse, editor, proofer, his typist—’
‘I know this story, Claire. Get to it.’
‘Sorry. What I mean to say is, I lived in his shadow. But now he is long, long gone, and I’m still living in his shadow. I’ve become a walking reliquary, I’m Frank’s memory on the hoof.’
‘What are you talking about? Are you sick?’
‘I get all these tedious enquiries from academics begging for answers to their long-winded questions, asking for my time and insight.’
‘Just tell them to sod off. That’s easy.’
‘The truth is if I stay here forever, I will actually become the walking font of Francis Carson memorabilia, one of those dotty old Oxford dames.’
‘If you stay here?’ He thought he had misheard her.
‘I see them all the time on the bus, with their sturdy shoes and their stained cardigans—’
‘If you stay here?’
‘—and their untidy hair and doughy faces, their glasses slipping down their noses, their handbags full of tins of cat food—’
‘That could never be you! You are beautiful!’
‘I’m not talking about what time does to women. I’m talking about what we do to ourselves.’
‘What do women do to themselves?’ He was at a loss.
‘Look at Florence, a narrow little life spent fussing over bridge games, or jumble sales for worthy causes, perfectly content with life in a teacup, and now and then to peer over the rim.’
‘You talk as if you’re in danger of becoming a Barbara Pym character. If anything you’ve been bold. Even reckless.’ He regretted that last.
The kettle whistled and she rose, turned it off, and said, ‘I’m forty-five. I have years before me. I’ll never know what I can accomplish if I don’t leave.’
‘Leave? Oxford?’
‘Not for good and always. I’ll keep this house.’
‘Where else would you go?’ His face lit. ‘Would you come to London?’
She ran a hand through her thick tawny hair. ‘Mary and Catherine are making their lives in London. They don’t need their old mum hanging round.’
Quentin did not like the direction the conversation was taking. ‘And Michael? He’s in London too, Presiding Secretary of Great Dane Enterprises, as I recall.’ He sounded more bitter than he wanted to.
‘Please let’s not talk about Michael, Kanga. You know how it upsets me. Besides, I don’t even like London, and if I moved there, sooner or later someone would find us out.’
‘I don’t give a damn! I’ve told you for years I wanted a divorce! I want to marry you.’
‘Yes, dear, and I told you, I will never remarry.’
‘We could live together.’
‘Kanga, I want to find out something about myself that isn’t Frank Carson, or Mary or Catherine, or Michael. I don’t want to be forever defined by my marriage to Frank.’
Quentin peered at her as if the steam from the kettle had darkened his glasses and impaired his vision. ‘Is that really how you think of yourself? Defined by Frank? How can you say that?’
‘I am his widow.’
He laughed out loud. ‘Oh, that is rich, Roo! Rich and ridiculous! What are you, some Indian widow about to crawl onto the funeral pyre? I never heard such rubbish. His widow. He’s been gone for fifteen years! You and I have been together as long as you and Frank. Do I count for nothing?’
‘You prove my point! Men always think of their women as satellites. You’re doing the same thing. You admire Louisa Partridge because she refused to be defined by the men in her life, not her husband, not her American colonel when he up and left her. And not Bernard when he said no to her book. Louisa said, “Fie on you, Selwyn and Archer!” And she did something else. You admire Gigi Fischer because she stepped out from Roy’s shadow, made her own career. She’s her own woman, not some man’s satellite. Even Enid Sherrill! You took the office she wanted, and so she left, struck out on her own. Don’t you see? It’s the same thing. I cannot stay here and be Frank’s widow for the rest of my life.’
‘What about me?’
‘I can’t stay here forever and be Frank’s widow and your mistress.’
He felt the sting physically, as though she had slapped him. He had no retort. He was speechless, and so he rose and went to his leather case, drawing out the two big envelopes. ‘Gigi brought these, gave them to me yesterday. They are a gift, of sorts. One is Frank’s script for Some of These Days and a lot of letters he wrote to Roy Rosenbaum. And this one—’ He laid his hand on the larger envelope ‘—is full of your letters to Frank. She found them after Roy died.’ He knew her well enough to see that she was shaken.
Claire spoke at last. ‘Five years it took her to return them?’
‘It doesn’t pay to question Gigi’s instincts or logic.’
‘You always knew those Hollywood bastards were lying to you.’
‘Yes, much good it did me.’
‘And the second suitcase?’
‘Was there a second suitcase?’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘This is all Gigi found. There was no second suitcase.’ He hoped Claire would contest this, or refine the point, but she only commented icily that they were all bastards, every one of that Hollywood lot. ‘They are,’ he went on, ‘but I came today to bring these to you, and to ask why you lied to me. Please don’t insult me by asking about what.These letters are An Inconvenient Wife. They are the book itself, the very wording.’
‘You read them!’
‘So did Gigi.’
‘I find that intolerable. They belong to me.’
‘Gigi said you could sue her if you like.’
‘And you?’
‘You can’t sue me, Claire. I love you, and you love me, and we have been everything to one another. So I am devastated here. I can’t understand why you would lie, and tell me you had a carbon of the novel, of most of the novel, when you didn’t. When you wrote it yourself.’
‘I had his notes. I had a portion that I’d typed. I didn’t lie about that. I knew what he was going to do with it. He would have used me for that book, the story of our crumbling marriage. I knew that story as well as he did. I don’t see why you’re so outraged. I wrote all of September Street and you were fine with that little ruse.’
‘I was, and I rather wish I’d thought it through more carefully.’
‘You regret it?’
He chose not to answer, returning stubbornly to his question. ‘Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me the truth about An Inconvenient Wife?’
‘I did tell you … most of the truth. I showed you the carbon that I had.’
‘Which you personally typed on
carbon paper.’
‘Frank wrote about desperate women clinging to errant men. Look at Elsie Rose in Some of These Days. What was she but a woman who was willing to lose everything for a man who didn’t even want her? I just continued his strengths in An Inconvenient Wife. The same with September Street. Tess of Broadstairs. And look! Everyone said that book was Francis Carson at his finest! Frank would never have published anything if not for me! I made it possible for him to write!’
‘Perhaps,’ Quentin replied, ‘but none of this changes the fact that you lied to me.’
‘Look, Kanga, it wasn’t really a lie, and it certainly didn’t hurt anyone. It certainly didn’t hurt your firm or your reputation. It made a lot of money. Both books made money. They’re still making money.’
‘Why didn’t you trust me?’
She wilted in front of his eyes. ‘It would have been unethical, and you might not have done it.’
‘But a few years later, with September Street, you assumed I had no ethics.’
‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it.’
‘You assumed I loved you so much I’d do anything for you. Anything you wanted.’ The voice of Enid Sherrill grated on his heart. ‘Have you used me to further Frank’s career?’
He was not at all sure that he could bear the answer, but he didn’t need to bear it. Claire came round to him, and knelt between his open knees. Her blue eyes shone with tears and she murmured reassurances one after another as she brushed his hair, and kissed him over and over, removed his glasses, unbuttoned his shirt, unbuckled his belt, and he rose and wrapped her in his arms, his cheek to her hair. He moved against her so she could feel his hardness, and brought his lips down her neck, knowing that her head would tilt back and her mouth would fall open and he would draw down the back zipper of her pink and green summer dress, and it would fall away from her shoulders like the petals of a spent rose, and beneath his hands, her heart would start to pound as they did a kind of tango known only to the two of them down the short hall, into the study and fell onto the accommodating couch.
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