AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘I disagree,’ said Fleur. She felt irritation rising up in her. ‘She’s my mother. She’s supposed to be devoted to her husband, so devoted she couldn’t leave him. Here’s you, knowing everything about her, obviously real close to her. The row of beans doesn’t totally add up.’

  Joe looked at her and grinned again. ‘I suppose you deserve some honesty. Yes, I’m close to her. I’ve tried to be a good friend to her through all this.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘Well – a loving friend. Fleur, maybe I could start by telling you how I know your mother. It’s relevant. You see I wrote a book, and there was a section in it about your father. I was talking about him on the radio and she heard me. Got in touch with me.’

  ‘Really? So you know what actually did happen?’

  ‘Well – some of it. Not everything.’

  Fleur felt as if she had been struggling along a very long tunnel, and that suddenly at the end of it was a faint pinprick of light. She raced, half frightened, towards it. ‘Tell me what you know. Please.’

  ‘Fleur,’ he said and his voice was gentle, the green eyes carefully exploring hers. ‘I will tell you. But are you sure about wanting to hear? It’s not an entirely nice story.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘All right. But have some of that wine.’

  She took a sip, a careful sip. She didn’t need wine, didn’t need cushioning, she needed the truth. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, there was a scandal. With your father. It – it had received a lot of publicity, and he was dropped by the studio.’

  ‘What kind of scandal? With some woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was it? Some film star? He was very handsome, you know,’ she said, anxious that Joe should be fully aware of how wonderful her father had been. ‘Girls always did love him. But when he was here, in New York, he never really got involved with anyone. Not seriously. I guess it was different over there.’

  ‘I guess it was. No, not a film star. A casting director. But then there was some other – problem.’

  ‘Oh really? What?’

  Joe was clearly embarrassed. He took another large drink of wine, and said, ‘Well, there was a scandal over someone else. It was in some rather unsavoury magazines. Someone less suitable, as far as I can make out. You have to remember I only saw a lot of very old cuttings. It was a while ago, after all.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ said Fleur. Her heart was thumping painfully. She felt there was quite a lot here she wasn’t being told, but at least it was something.

  ‘And this casting director, her name was Naomi MacNeice, was very angry. He was dropped by the studio. They are terrible prima donnas, these people, you know. He didn’t get any more parts, and he had no money. He was living – well, with some friends, when he was knocked down by the car.’

  ‘And it was as simple as that?’

  ‘Well – yes,’ said Joe carefully.

  She didn’t believe him. Well, she believed him: as far as the story had gone. But there was more and she knew it, and she needed to know, and he wasn’t going to tell her. Just the same, it had been kind of him to try to help, to answer some of her questions. And he was clearly trying to shield her from something out of kindness, however misplaced. He had certainly done more than anyone else to try to help. She smiled at him, and said, and meant it, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for telling me. I needed to know so badly.’

  The small speech had an extraordinary effect on Joe; he stared at her and swallowed and tears appeared unmistakably in the green eyes. He got out his handkerchief and wiped them, and smiled at her. ‘Sorry. Don’t mind me. I cry all the time. Can’t help it. I’m an old softie.’

  Fleur stared at him, profoundly affected, touched by the tears. ‘I like it that you cry,’ she said finally. ‘My father used to cry. Men ought to cry, he said, they shouldn’t be afraid to feel.’

  ‘No. Mind you, it can be embarrassing at times.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Who cares what other people think?’

  ‘Well – occasionally I do.’

  ‘Well I don’t think you should.’

  ‘Do you cry?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh yes, quite often. Mostly with temper,’ she added. ‘I have a terrible temper.’

  ‘Like your mother,’ said Joe, smiling at her. ‘Those remarkable legs of yours are obviously not all you inherited from her.’

  ‘No,’ said Fleur, blushing, feeling foolish, but still wildly delighted that he had noticed, had liked her legs. There was a silence; then more to ease her own embarrassment than anything she said, ‘Anyway, I’m glad to know what happened. It’s so much less terrible than I expected. It’s like – like when you learn the facts of life. Adults get all squirmy and can hardly meet your eye, and then the worst it sounds is kind of tacky.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does. And I’m afraid your father’s story does sound kind of tacky, too. As you put it.’

  ‘The worst thing,’ she said, determinedly not dwelling on the tackiness, ‘the worst thing is the waste. The awful waste. It just need not have happened. If he had stayed in New York with us; if he hadn’t met this woman; if – well, there are a lot of ifs. Aren’t there?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Joe, carefully, clearly recognizing another enormous, unspoken if hanging in the air: ‘If my mother hadn’t sent him away.’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘so, now I know what Miss duGrath meant about the story killing him. I suppose it did.’

  ‘In a way, I suppose so too.’

  ‘And this magazine. What was it called? Confidential?’

  ‘No, the original story was in something called Inside Story. Even tackier.’

  ‘Who was the editor? And who wrote the story? Do you know?’

  ‘Fleur, I have no idea. It’s long since folded. Why, are you going to go and murder them both in their beds?’

  ‘No,’ said Fleur, ‘that would be too quick and easy for them. But it might be nice to make them suffer rather slowly, for a long time. Don’t you think?’

  She did feel better. Much better. The state of rage she had been in ever since her grandmother had died and she had met her mother had cooled, eased right down. Hearing the story from Joe Payton, incomplete as it had been, had helped a lot. It was an awful, sad, sordid story, and clearly it was actually sadder still, but at least it was no longer a total mystery. She could begin to face it head-on and meet it in the eye, and get to know it.

  She needed to know more, though. She needed to know what this woman was like, who had so casually picked her father up and used him and then discarded him again, like a Kleenex; she needed to find out who these people were, putting out these filthy lies; and she needed to try and see the actual article that had been written. She wondered if Miss duGrath had it; she could ask her to show it to her. And she longed almost unbearably to visit her father’s grave.

  And of course there was Joe to think about: beautiful, kind, tender, sexy Joe.

  She waited for news from Caroline in a fury of impatience, her hostility growing; her tolerance and forgiveness for her mother hung on a fragile thread, and she could feel it stretching, near to snapping.

  When she got the letter saying that Caroline simply couldn’t get away, not until the autumn at the earliest (although promising that yes, of course she could go to secretarial college), that her children were still upset at the death of their father, that she had to stay with them, she tore it into shreds, flung it into the lavatory and pulled the chain over and over again, weeping with rage. ‘Bitch,’ she kept saying, ‘bitch, bitch.’ She had been mad to trust her, mad to listen to her. Caroline was simply not interested in her, she was too wrapped up, totally wrapped up, in her other hateful goody-goody daughter and her disgusting, arrogant sons – well, they had to be, all boys were disgust
ing and arrogant – to give any of her precious life to her.

  Then another letter arrived, a few days later.

  Dear Fleur,

  I know you will be very upset that your mother cannot take you to Los Angeles in the foreseeable future. I would like you to try and believe that she is upset too. Things are very difficult for her. And I’m glad that you are going to accept her offer of secretarial school. She wants to do this for you very much.

  I do think, though, it would be good for you to go to Los Angeles. I wonder if you would like to go with me? I have to go there in July anyway, to research a book I am writing about the new-wave heroes in Hollywood, and it would be nice for me to have your company. We could go and see Yolande, and I could show you around, and of course we could visit your father’s grave. I should warn you I shall be busy and not able to be with you all the time.

  Let me know what you think.

  Joe Payton

  Fleur read the letter several times. Then she raised her hands above her head and whooped very loudly for sheer joy. LA. With Joe. Days and days of him. Near him, able really to study him, to get to know him. The offer was wonderful. She sat down and wrote her reply.

  Dear Joe,

  I think it is really kind of you to offer to take me to LA. I would very much like to accept. I promise to try not to be a nuisance or to get in the way while you are working. Please tell Caroline I quite understand that she is too busy to take me herself, and that I would like to go to secretarial school this autumn.

  Yours,

  Fleur FitzPatrick

  Fleur and Joe stayed at the Chateau Marmont. It was Yolande’s idea.

  You’ll really love it [she wrote to Fleur]. Your father stayed there when he first came to Hollywood. I’d love to put you up, but I don’t have the room. Fleur, I don’t know how much I can help you in other ways. Naomi MacNeice has fallen from grace and has been mixing her drugs rather too much. She isn’t well, and lives in a tiny beach house out at Malibu. She certainly won’t see you, unless you say something very clever. I’m glad you and Mr Payton have become such good friends. He is a very wise and kind man. I knew I was right to trust him!

  Yr affec friend,

  Yolande duGrath

  They touched down in LA at lunch-time, in a shimmery, blue-skied haze; Fleur was childishly and, she feared, foolishly excited. ‘Oh, wow,’ she kept saying. ‘Oh, wow.’

  Joe didn’t seem to mind; he smiled at her and patted her hand. He did it quite a lot. Fleur wondered rather hopelessly if physical contact between them would ever be any closer than that.

  He had arranged to pick up a car at the airport. He took Fleur on a quick tour of LA on the way to the hotel. ‘There’s the Hollywood sign. Did you know it used to say Hollywood-land? They tore the last letters off in 1949. Now, this is Sunset Boulevard, where all the ritzy restaurants were, the Mocambo, and the famous Garden of Allah, and Schwab’s, where all the out-of-work actors used to hang out –’

  ‘Like my dad?’

  ‘Like your dad, I dare say, yes.’ He put his hand over hers again. ‘You OK?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said, looking down at the hand.

  ‘Good. Well, I think we’ll maybe cut the tour short now, get settled in. Have a drink and then do some more sightseeing after that.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  Later, just before dinner, they drove up to Griffith Park and looked down from the Observatory; the neatly defined sprawling grid of Los Angeles, softened by the dusk, sparkled below them. Beyond it was the ocean, converted into mist by the evening light. The sun sank steadily, heavily into it. Fleur sighed. It was horribly, painfully romantic.

  ‘It’s really beautiful here,’ she said. ‘I’d like to stay for a long long time.’

  ‘Don’t you remember it at all?’

  ‘Not much. I was only twelve.’

  ‘Of course you were. A baby.’

  ‘No,’ said Fleur, feeling a stab of irritation. ‘Quite grown up actually.’

  Next morning they drove down towards Venice; Yolande duGrath was waiting for them with iced tea.

  ‘It’s so very nice to see you again,’ she said to Joe. ‘And Fleur! My goodness, you’ve grown. And you look so like your father.’

  ‘Do I really? Grandma always said that, but I thought she was just, you know, making it up.’

  ‘Oh, no. You have his eyes, his hair, his height. Just look at those legs.’

  ‘Her mother has long legs too,’ said Joe. He obviously felt he had to stake a claim for Caroline somewhere in all this.

  ‘Does she?’ said Yolande. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her. Brendan told me so much about her. She sounded a lovely person. You must be very happy to have found her.’

  Yolande smiled at Fleur. She felt her face closing in, her eyes hardening. ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ was all she said.

  ‘Joe, what’s the new book about? Anything I can help with this time?’

  ‘It’s about the new young Hollywood heroes. Know any of them?’

  ‘Not many. I’m better on the old ones. Montgomery Clift, he’s interesting. Are you doing him?’

  ‘Yes. And Anthony Perkins.’

  ‘Oh. Now there’s a lovely man.’

  ‘Larceny too,’ said Joe and laughed.

  ‘Yes, plenty of larceny. I’m glad you remembered that.’

  ‘Yolande, everyone in this town knows about you and your larceny.’

  ‘Could I see the article about my father?’ said Fleur. She didn’t know what they were talking about, and she felt very on edge suddenly.

  ‘My darling child, I’m afraid I don’t have it.’

  ‘Where did you see it, Joe?’

  ‘In the Sunday Times cuttings library,’ said Joe. ‘Great place. But they don’t let you take things out. Sorry, poppet.’

  Fleur glared at them both. ‘I think you’re keeping it from me. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Honeybunch,’ said Joe, ‘we’re doing nothing of the kind. You have to believe me.’

  She didn’t believe them, but there was nothing she could do about it. At least he had called her honeybunch. She felt quite weak with delight.

  Yolande proposed lunch: ‘There’s a perfectly lovely Chinese restaurant I know you’d like. If you don’t mind driving us there, Joe. Called the Formosa. It’s just off Santa Monica at Formosa. It was a great little place in the fifties. Then I thought we could head off to Forest Hills in the Valley and look at Byron’s headstone. Pardon me, my darling, I still think of him as Byron. He was Brendan to you, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Fleur.

  She felt very subdued that night. She had coped with seeing the headstone, had stood there for a long time, while Yolande held her arm, looking at it, reading the still-fresh inscription: ‘Brendan FitzPatrick, 1919–1957. Beloved Father and Son.’

  ‘Shall we go into the chapel?’ said Yolande gently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fleur, ‘yes, I’d like that.’

  And then she was twelve years old again, and she was standing between her grandmother and Yolande, holding both their hands, and trying, trying so hard not to cry, digging her nails into her palms to distract herself from the other, dreadful pain, watching her father’s coffin, huge and dark and dreadful, disappearing through the double doors, with the small posy of white roses she had placed on it, with a card that read, ‘Daddy, with all my best love, Fleur’. When she came out into the brilliant sunshine, she looked at Yolande with the same despair and bewilderment as she had felt then, and discovered it had hardly eased at all.

  ‘I guess I need to get a good night’s sleep,’ she said to Joe after dinner.

  ‘I guess you do. Want to talk first? About anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so. No. But th
ank you. You’re being very kind.’

  ‘I like you, Fleur. I find it easy to be kind. And besides, you deserve kindness.’

  The next day he had work to do, people to see; Fleur said she would amuse herself. ‘Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  When he had gone, she looked up the number of ACI Studios and, her heart beating rather fast, picked up the phone.

  ‘I’m going to see Naomi MacNeice tomorrow,’ she said, as they ate dinner.

  ‘Fleur, you really are a remarkable young lady. How on earth did you manage that?’

  ‘Oh, told them I was a long-lost relative,’ said Fleur, her heart leaping at the tribute. ‘They gave me her number in the end, and then I got the maid. I said to ask if Naomi would speak with Miss FitzPatrick. She said she’d ask. And then she came on the phone.’

  ‘Naomi did?’

  ‘Yeah. She said who was I and I said I was Brendan FitzPatrick’s daughter, or maybe she remembered him as Byron. And she said, “Oh, so you’re the little girl and how old are you now, eleven or twelve?” And then she said what could she do for me. She went on for a bit about how my dad couldn’t act, but had such a wonderful face. That was a bit hard to take, but I took it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I said could I go and see her. And she said yes, but she couldn’t tell me where he was. So I said that was OK, I’d just like to meet her anyway. And she said yes, I could go tomorrow afternoon. She lives at Malibu Colony.’

  ‘Fleur,’ said Joe, ‘you really are something else. As they say in your country.’ He hesitated. ‘Could I come with you? I think you just might need the moral support. I promise I won’t get in the way.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘No,’ said Fleur. ‘No, I really would rather go on my own.’

  ‘OK,’ said Joe, and she could see he was concerned. ‘At least let me chauffeur you. The Colony is a way away from here.’