Cool Repentance

by Antonia Fraser

  The truth was that Gregory exerted some kind of odd influence over her, she had to face that, and had done so since that first abrasive meeting on the beach. Then he had displayed the rare power to rile her - she, Jemima Shore, whose great asset as an interviewer was the fact that she was never riled, no matter what the provocation, using on the contrary her cool composure to rile others where necessary in the cause of her investigations. Now he was persuading her to smoke and drink whisky before lunch, something which was even rarer; many of Jemima's best friends felt that her whole legendary composure could be summed up by the glass of chilled dry white wine she was so fond of drinking.

  Spike Thompson, for example, had been able to convert Jemima neither to whisky nor to cigarettes, under far more intimate circumstances: on him she had imposed her own demand of champagne, and, where cigarettes were concerned, had merely watched while Spike had rolled his own choice of smoke; naked and happy she had gazed at the ceiling and smelt the slightly sweet smell of pot drifting by without any inclination to share it.

  The thought of Spike suggested to her, irritatingly, that she was possibly rather attracted to Gregory in a tiresome Beatrice and Benedick kind of way, which scarcely fitted her plans for Bridset relaxation. Jemima, being a free woman, made it her practice to do exactly what she pleased in that direction; especially when she was, by her own reckoning, fancy-free - as she was at the present time. Doing what she pleased, she decided, might include an uninhibited Bridset Idyll with an energetic cameraman, but it definitely did not include any kind of involvement with the provoking and doubtless complicated Gregory Rowan.

  Nevertheless the ability of Gregory to intrigue and tease and annoy her suggested to Jemima, from experience, that she was not absolutely indifferent to him in the mysterious sphere of sexual attraction. She therefore made a resolution not to allow these tentative thoughts on the subject of his physical attraction to go any further; she backed it up with a further resolution to keep this resolution. She was here to talk about Christabel.

  It was therefore rather a pity from the point of view of both these resolutions that conversation about Christabel led at once to the topics of love, infatuation and even, though it was not explicitly stated as such, sex and Gregory Rowan. None of this exactly helped to quell Jemima's personal interest in the subject.

  A further surprise awaited her. Gregory spoke quite simply when she questioned him about Christabel and the past. His irony as well as his hostility were temporarily dropped. There was an air of relief about his confidences as though he positively enjoyed making them. Was it the magic of the trained interviewer at work, even with a man as sophisticated as Gregory? Or was it, as Jemima soon concluded, that Gregory welcomed any opportunity to talk about Christabel Cartwright?

  'I loved her madly. I loved her to distraction. Shall I put it like that? When she ran off with that ghastly ginger-haired lout, my heart stopped.'

  'Was that really all he was? Iron Boy? Just a ginger-headed lout. No one here will talk about him - for obvious reasons.'

  Gregory considered. 'Am I prepared to talk about Iron Boy? Probably not. Am I even prepared to be fair about him? The answer is, once again, probably not. He was ginger-headed and he was a lout; but he did have a kind of mad vitality, at any rate when he was a boy; people, all sorts of people, had a good time in his company. Beyond that, there's really nothing to be said for him at all. Back to my heart, if you don't mind. It really never started again. Not until she came back to Lark. And even then the old ticker is not what it was ... How about that? Is all that sufficiently dramatic for you? I am a playwright you know, and as such, unlike some of my contemporaries, frequently accused of too much plot and melodrama in my works.' Gregory smiled calmly before continuing: 'Oh, by the way, perhaps I should add that I also love Blanche and Rina Cartwright. Quite as deeply. And Julian. In many ways I love him the most of all. He's much the nicest character in the Cartwright family: the only unselfish member of it, for example.'

  'So that's why you stayed here all those years? Why you never married?' It was irresistible; the curiosity of Jemima Shore Investigator would not be stifled.

  Gregory looked rather surprised. 'It's why I stayed here, of course. But I was married. To Anna Maria, yes, the Anna Maria, Anna Maria Packe of the King Charles Theatre Company. You might say that I've always had a thing about actresses—'

  'Natural perhaps in a playwright,' Jemima put in encouragingly.

  'Except that's not the real point. Anna Maria was still at Central School when we got married. It's probably the other way round: the kind of woman who attracts me tends to become an actress.'

  'And that is?' Jemima supposed she must number quite a few actresses among her friends, although she did not generally think about them in this category; this was because in her experience actresses, like actors, and most other categories of professional person, were infinitely varied in their personalities. But she was interested to hear Gregory's answer.

  'Emotional. Insecure. Vulnerable. Above all the latter. Beneath all the emotion, in need of care and protection.'

  Jemima had not been notably struck by the emotional vulnerability of Anna Maria Packe while in Larminster, as the actress to-ed and fro-ed contentedly between her director husband and her actor lover, satisfying both no doubt, and herself most of all. She said so, as delicately as possible.

  Gregory hastened to agree with her.

  'That's really why it broke up. She was far too tough and so was I. Anna Maria's much happier looking after Boy, with all his interesting hypochondria. And I—'

  He stopped. 'But this isn't why you've come, surely. To talk about the past, my past with Anna Maria. The facts about Christabel and me can be quickly told. They're public knowledge, after all these years. We had a wonderful flaming romance during the run of Lombardy Summer - my first really successful play - and it was the summer, the long hot summer of 'fifty-nine. It continued on Broadway in the autumn, that extraordinary season for me, Lombardy such a hit, and of course Anna Maria safely tucked away at Stratford, no chance of joining me.

  'But,' he stopped again, then plunged on, 'I also wanted to be free. I didn't put it like that to myself of course: I told myself that I was an artist, needed to live alone, all that kind of rot. So - one fine day, when we were all back in London, and my new play had opened, and flopped - the only one that ever did - Tower, it became an instant classic by the way, never stops being revived to loud critical, where-did-we-go-wrong? applause. Nothing like the failures they themselves have caused to turn on the critics, but that didn't help me at the time. Nor poor Christabel, who played Baroness Anne, one of her few failures. And she wasn't going to be able to revive it again and again over the next twenty years, was she? So one fine day, she upped and married Julian Cartwright.'

  'But he wasn't part of the theatre?'

  'No, no, he was just her devoted admirer, her rich young man, she used to call him. He was always around. Christabel wanted security, she said. I took it to be financial security she was after. I was bitterly hurt. She'd always sworn to me that she couldn't go to bed with Julian, not my type she used to say, not my type, darling. I was her type. I thought.'

  'But you came here? You came and lived here? So that in the end - she had both.' Jemima felt she must tread with extreme care. But she no longer felt out of her depth. Many things about the household - and its attachments - at Lark Manor were becoming clear to her.

  'Yes, she had both. Financial security from Julian, and a good deal of emotional security as well down the years. Emotional security also from me, encouragement, understanding with her career. More parts. Knowing all about the theatre, which Julian couldn't, or didn't care to do. I found, you see,' he said simply, 'that I couldn't live without her. And Julian too, I liked him. He liked me. I made her happy. We both of us possessed her. Julian is an extraordinary man. I don't know if you realize that. Besides, I too was having my cake and eating it. I had my own kind of family life at Lark, especially after the li
ttle girls were born. And I had my freedom. It suited me. It suited everyone.'

  Until Barry Blagge came along - or rather grew to his precocious manhood, thought Jemima. But this thought she did not put into words. Gregory too left it unspoken.

  'I have come to talk about Christabel,' she said aloud. 'Now there is a vulnerable person. For many reasons—' She meant to concentrate the conversation on Christabel's elopement with Iron Boy and her surprising cool return. But it was as though Gregory, having once decided to put the character of the younger Christabel in perspective, the Christabel with whom he had fallen in love, was reluctant to let it go.

  'You're right! Women never seem to understand that,' he exclaimed.

  'Christabel always has been extraordinarily insecure, full of self-doubt, self-dislike even, even at the height of her fame, even before all - well, all of that, when she was one of the best-known actresses on the British stage. Oh the doubts, the agonies! About her looks, the loss of youth -that was the attraction of Iron Boy, the confidence it gave her, much more than the mad physical infatuation of the gutter press's lurid imagination. I suppose too she had an irresponsible good time in his company, and she could forget she was an ageing actress, forget everything. After she ran off, I used to think about her new life in the watches of the night. I used to imagine Barry was like Comus, surrounded by his crew of unruly midnight revellers. You know - "What hath night to do with sleep?'"

  'Wasn't Christabel rather oddly cast as The Lady? With her "virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion Conscience"'

  Jemima, who had got a First in English at Cambridge, was not averse to quoting Milton herself.

  Gregory smiled. 'I should have known better than to bandy quotes with you. It was Barry I was referring to, not Christabel. "Virtuous mind" - I fear not. In any case my Miltonic visions owed a great deal to my stupid insomnia and that's a thing of the past I'm glad to say. Isn't it odd? I've slept like a top ever since Christabel returned. No comment, please. To return to Christabel herself and her insecurity, when he, Iron Boy, ditched her - took Comus's rout somewhere else, if you like - in one way it was the dream of guilt, or self-hatred come true. In another way it totally destroyed her. I believe she was scarcely sane when Julian went and found her and fetched her down here, so he told me.'

  Jemima saw her opportunity. (It was time to put aside those tentative thoughts on her own behalf about Gregory: no one who on his own confession specialized in vulnerable women was going to be drawn to Jemima Shore, that golden goddess of television. It was lucky that the Spike Thompsons of this world had a different method of assessing vulnerability.) Murmuring sympathetically, she encouraged Gregory to explain to her the circumstances of Christabel's return: how Christabel had simply telephoned one day, a short desperate call to Julian and asked him to take her back - 'to make a fresh start'. And he had just driven up and fetched her, just like that - 'I told you he was a saint.'

  'How did everyone here take it? In this secluded place - the return of the prodigal - if one may put it like that. How did you take it for example?' It was her gentle persistent television interviewer's manner.

  Gregory paused and then laughed. 'It sounds ridiculous but at first I felt quite violent. When I first saw her, that day, at Lark, the most perfect early spring day, cold wind from the sea but sunshine, the wind blowing the first daffodils in the drive, and her hair - the wind blowing the beautiful hair, still beautiful - and she so charming, little jokes, just the same, I was amazed by her lightheartedness. She only showed one pang of emotion and that's when we had to tell her that her dreadful mangy old spaniel Mango had died. For some reason Julian had kept that news from her. It was Christabel who adored that dog; Julian couldn't bear him; that was another thing Julian and I had in common: we loved Christabel and loathed her spaniel. I was surprised he even kept Mango after Christabel left, but perhaps he had hopes that Mango would lure her back to Lark. Instead Mango ran out on the main road in her absence, nobody looking after him properly I fear, and got killed. She asked to see the grave, the place where we buried him in the woods. Apart from that, nothing, just little jokes.

  'So you see,' he paused, 'for one terrible moment, I wanted to do her some frightful physical injury. I almost wanted to kill her for all the suffering she had caused. So stupid. As I told you, I love her. I'll always love her. You can't kill people like Christabel for what they do. You see, somewhere deep down, she does it to herself worst of all.'

  Jemima thought of the elegant pampered woman: the woman who had come back to Lark Manor with impunity to find everything just the same - except for the death of an old dog - and wondered privately if that was actually true. To Gregory, she continued: 'And the children? Regina and Blanche, how did they take it?'

  'Resentful at first. Extremely. Bui they got over it. They'd both seen their mother in London, of course, over the years, although Julian wouldn't let them visit her alone, always sent Ketty along to ward off evil. Evil in the shape of Barry Blagge. Once they grew older, they chose not to meet Barry of their own accord. It was embarrassing for them: the Blagges, you see, they were still there at Lark as servants; I think Rina felt it even worse than Blanche, although it's difficult to tell with a reserved girl like that. Nowadays, I hasten to say, everything's fine with the girls. But you can imagine why I didn't at first want television, in the shape of you, Miss Jemima Shore Investigator, coming down here and upsetting the applecart.' He smiled again.

  'And the Blagges?' pursued Jemima. 'To me, that's almost the most amazing part of all. She ran off with their only child and they stayed here. In the same place.'

  'Ah, how little you understand of our delightful country ways! This was their home, wasn't it? They looked after it long before Julian married Christabel. There have always been Blagges at Lark, there were Blagges long before there were Cartwrights, for example. Major Cartwright's father, Julian's grandfather, only bought the property some time in the eighties, but there are Blagge graves in the churchyard stretching back into the seventeenth century. Jim Blagge had been through the war with Major Cartwright: excellent brave soldier, by the way. Resourceful and courageous. "A real killer, Blagge was," the Major is fond of saying: strange to think of that distinguished elderly man handing round the meat and two veg behind his chair as he says it. No, it was she who was the interloper, Christabel, the actress, the woman from the outer world.'

  He added: 'The Kettering sisters are local too. Two bright farmer's daughters. Only Rose married Jim Blagge and went into service, and Ketty, the younger sister, became first the girls' nannie, then housekeeper and general factotum when she went with them to London and Christabel was working all the time. She was quite stagestruck in those days. Finally, with Christabel's departure, Ketty was queen of the roost at Lark - with only Rose Blagge to keep her in her place.

  'Julian never kept her in her place.' Gregory lit yet another cigarette: 'Too grateful to her for sticking around and preserving order. Ketty was a good-looking woman in her day, handsome rather; the frightful Barry Blagge looked rather like her, I always fancied, only those strong straight features and red hair came out better in a man. Ketty's not so old, either. And she always worshipped Julian. Christabel used to tease him about it -in the old days.'

  'And then Julian Cartwright took Christabel back,' said Jemima thoughtfully. 'In spite of everything. Didn't he - well, think of the effect on the Blagges and Ketty?'

  'They were appalled, of course. It might have been different if Christabel had shown some true signs of repentance - by Ketty's and Rose Blagge's rather narrow Catholic standards, that is. They love sinners - in theory - so long as they acknowledge their sins. A sort of Mary Magdalen act would have been acceptable, perhaps. Hair turned grey, some modern form of sackcloth and ashes. Instead - well, Christabel carried it off with her usual style, her hair looked better than ever and her clothes ran their usual gamut from Zandra Rhodes to Bellville Sassoon with not a touch of sackcloth anywhere.

  'I sai
d Julian was a kind of saint,' he went on. 'But haven't you ever noticed how saints can be curiously insensitive to the sufferings of lesser mortals caused by their own sanctity? I wrote rather a good play on the subject once, although I say so myself. Holy Margaret. They're reviving it at the National in the autumn: you should try to catch it. No, Christabel was Julian's obsession, just as she was mine. He'd never lost it. He jumped at the chance to succour her. As for the Blagges and Ketty, he just assumed they'd share his feelings, in so far as he thought about it at all. And he'd been brought up in a certain way, hadn't he? Kind as he is, to him, after all, and this is going to sound ghastly and old fashioned, but for him finally Blagges and Ketty were just servants. His servants.'

  As you were both her servants: but Jemima left that thought unspoken too. As she drove back through the Lark woods and down the end of the Manor drive, she pondered on a number of things. She pondered on Christabel's enemies: there certainly were plenty of those to be found in and around Lark Manor. In particular she pondered on the whole matter of servants and the extraordinary intimacy which Cartwrights, Ketterings and Blagges had all shared in this beautiful Bridset valley, after Christabel's departure. Until Julian Cartwright, the master, one day shattered the whole thing by casually restoring Christabel to favour.

  Mr Blagge, the father of Barry. Jim Blagge: 'a real killer'. The real killer? Jemima was still turning over the two phrases in her mind and picturing to herself Jim Blagge rowing his boat like Charon over the Styx - was it Jim Blagge Nat had seen through his binoculars, paying the penalty for it with his life? - when the telephone rang in her hotel suite.

  It was Detective Inspector Harwood. He was proposing a cup of tea on his way home.