AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Joe, why? Why are you shocked? What did I do that is so dreadfully shocking?’

  ‘If you really don’t know,’ he said, ‘then I am more shocked still. Fleur, that is your sister’s husband you are sleeping with. I imagine you’re sleeping with him?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I’m sleeping with him.’

  ‘Fleur, why? In God’s name why? What good will it do you?’

  ‘A lot. I hope.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Joe,’ she said, and in spite of her resolve to keep calm, she felt rage and pain rising up in her in a great hot physical shaft. ‘Joe, I think you owe me at least to listen to me. It isn’t quite what you think.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Really. Joe, that man had something to do with my father. I know he did.’

  ‘Oh, Fleur, for the love of God –’ Something in his voice was different, changed; she stared at him, he looked away.

  ‘Joe, what is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes there is. Joe, I know there is. You know something, don’t you?’

  ‘Fleur,’ said Joe, ‘leave me out of this, please.’

  ‘How can I, Joe? When I can see you’re involved. Don’t lie to me, Joe. I know you too well.’

  ‘Fleur, this is getting us nowhere. Let’s return to your charming little fantasy, shall we? How did you meet Piers anyway? How did you engineer that?’

  ‘He was having dinner with my boss. I went to the restaurant.’

  ‘Deliberately to meet him?’

  ‘Deliberately to meet him.’

  ‘Fleur, why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said and she could hear the pain in her own voice, ‘I’ll tell you, Joe Payton. It was because of something you said as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, really. So it’s my fault, is it? That you’re having an affair with your sister’s husband?’

  ‘Yes and that’s exactly it, she’s my sister, we have the same mother and I am still, still, after all this time, kept hidden away, a nasty, dirty, inconvenient little secret. “Oh, we didn’t tell Piers about you,” you said. “Obviously we didn’t tell Piers about you.” Obviously not. I mustn’t exist, as far as he’s concerned, must I, Joe? In case he doesn’t like it all, doesn’t approve. Chloe, dear Chloe can’t have her brilliant marriage put at risk, can she? That would be too terrible. So obviously we won’t mention her illegitimate sister.’

  ‘Fleur,’ said Joe. ‘Fleur, it wasn’t –’

  ‘How do you think that made me feel, Joe? Do you think it made me feel valued, worthwhile, good?’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘no, I don’t suppose it did.’

  ‘Too right it didn’t. It hurt so much, Joe, I can’t begin to tell you how much it hurt. But I took it on board, along with all the other things. I have so much on board, Joe, I’m going to sink one of these days. Well, I guess that’ll be pretty convenient for you all.’

  ‘Fleur, don’t be –’

  ‘So that’s how it began. I thought I’d hurt you all. Tell him who I was. And then – then I met him.’

  ‘And? I suppose you’re going to tell me you fell passionately in love with him.’

  ‘Oh, go fuck yourself,’ said Fleur. ‘The guy’s a – well never mind what he is. The point is, he heard my name and, Joe, he was shitting bricks. It was incredible.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Joe’s voice was interestingly sharp. She felt her senses quicken, tauten.

  ‘He didn’t say anything. Of course.’

  ‘Fleur,’ said Joe, and she could feel him relaxing, easing again, ‘Fleur, this is insanity. You clearly have absolutely nothing to go on. It’s a kind of terrible paranoia, this thing about your father. You’ve got to stop, got to let it go.’

  ‘Joe, I can’t. Please, please try to understand. It was there. In his eyes. Those famously beautiful eyes of his. Terror. Sheer, spooked terror. It was like he’d seen a ghost. Which I guess he had. In a way.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I excused myself politely and went and ate my dinner. And the next day I called him at his hotel and said would he sign a photograph of himself for someone. And he realized, or thought he realized, I didn’t know anything about him, and he asked me to have a drink with him. And now he thinks he’s safe, and I’m getting close to him. He likes me. A lot. He wants to be with me. That gives me quite a bit of pleasure, Joe, you know. In various ways.’

  He looked at her and she thought she had never seen such coldness, such distaste on a face. She shivered.

  ‘So you’re getting close to him. Has he confirmed all these suspicions of yours? Has he said, hey, Fleur, I knew your dad, we were in Hollywood together, or words to that effect?’

  ‘No. No, in fact he denies having been in Hollywood. At the time.’

  ‘Oh, really? Well that certainly proves everything, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Joe, for God’s sake. That’s the whole point. Of course he’s not going to tell me he knew my dad. If he did do something – well, something wrong.’

  ‘Fleur, I despair of you. On the strength of a moment of fevered imagination, you move in on your sister’s husband, have an affair with him –’

  ‘Joe, it was not imagination. Believe me. That man knows something about my father, and he won’t say what and that makes me think it was something bad.’

  ‘And I suppose it couldn’t have been something bad your father did? There’s a lot of evidence stacking up against him you know.’ He was sounding more reasonable now, calmer, he was listening to her. She felt just slightly better.

  ‘I don’t know, Joe. To be honest, that had crossed my mind, but I don’t think so. He looked scared, Joe, that’s the only word for it. And I have to find out. I have to.’

  ‘And how long are you going to pursue this?’

  ‘As long as it takes. Joe, if Piers Windsor did do something that hurt my father, if, just supposing, if it had been him who talked to that magazine, I want revenge. I’ve been very lonely and very unhappy for a great deal of my life because of him. I want him to be lonely and unhappy. At the very least.’

  ‘Fleur, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. It is simply a rather – what shall I say – neurotic notion.’

  ‘I do know, and it is not neurotic.’

  ‘I see. And this revenge – is this to be on Chloe too?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care about Chloe,’ said Fleur, meeting his eyes. ‘She may get hurt along the way, I’m afraid. Quite honestly, it doesn’t seem very important.’

  ‘That is a very sad and ugly attitude.’

  ‘I am sad, Joe. I’m sorry, but I am. I don’t know about ugly.’

  He was silent for a while, looking at her. ‘I still don’t know what you hope to achieve.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘first I have to establish for certain that he did do something. Make him tell me himself. It’s the only way I could think of. And then I want him to know the pain, the awful misery it caused me. I want to frighten him. I want to make him realize.’

  ‘I don’t know when I felt more angry,’ he said, ‘or more sickened.’

  Fleur stared at him. ‘That really hurts,’ she said. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘I was once,’ he said, ‘I loved being your friend. Loved helping you. You blew that one, Fleur. Your fault.’

  ‘I know.’ She spoke quietly.

  ‘But now – now you are really wreaking havoc. Destruction. It’s insane. Terrible. For nothing really. Hurting everyone. Yourself included. What about that nice boyfriend of yours? How do you think he would feel? Or does he know?’

  ‘No,’ said Fleur quietly. ‘No, he doesn’t know.’

  What Reuben would make of her pursuit of Piers
was something she kept buried, pushed to the bottom of her heart.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t find out. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Fleur, tears of guilt and exasperation springing to her eyes. ‘Of course I have. But –’

  ‘He has to go along with it, I suppose. Take it on board. Poor bastard.’

  ‘Joe,’ said Fleur, ‘Joe, don’t. I have to do this. I know there’s something. I know.’

  Joe stared at her. She could feel him withdrawing from her, feel his dislike. It hurt, but she had to live with that.

  ‘Oh, Fleur!’ Joe lay back in his chair and she could see something at the back of his eyes that she recognized but couldn’t quite define. ‘Fleur, this is total insanity. You detect or think you detect some reaction in the man to your name and base an entire case for the prosecution on it. And behave with the most appalling callousness into the bargain. You have absolutely no morals, no sense of decency. Now please, Fleur, I beg of you, drop this. Stop seeing Piers Windsor. Stay out of his life. I suppose you’re not going to tell me you’re falling in love with him?’

  ‘No,’ said Fleur, ‘of course not. I can’t stand him, most of the time. He’s a creep. I’m sorry for him, I suppose. I don’t want to be, but I am.’

  ‘Why are you sorry for him?’ said Joe and there was genuine interest in his eyes, replacing the hostility briefly.

  ‘Because he’s pathetic,’ she said. ‘He’s a pathetic mess. I don’t know what your beloved Chloe has told you about him, but –’

  ‘Nothing, obviously,’ said Joe. ‘She seems very happy with him.’

  ‘Well, she’s a fool,’ said Fleur.

  ‘Why? Why is she a fool?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Fleur. ‘I’m not going to be pulled into this one, Joe. I’m not doing any of your work for you. If you can’t see what’s wrong with Piers, with their marriage, with everything, I’m certainly not spelling it out for you. But I’m sure you do. I’m sure even you are not that stupid.’

  Joe looked at her, and she could see in his eyes that he did know, of course he must, and that at the same time it must not be spoken of between them, not named, not defined, for fear it would become an active, swift, deadly danger, rather than something still contained, locked away, for as long as possible. And as she caught him unawares, vulnerable, acknowledging that truth, she knew this was the moment to tear into him, ripping open his guard, pursuing the other.

  ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘Joe, you know something, don’t you? You know something about Piers. About all this?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he said quickly, too quickly, and didn’t look at her directly.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Fleur, leave this. Leave it, please.’

  ‘Joe, tell me. Look at me, and tell me.’

  And he looked at her, and his eyes told her.

  ‘So he was there? At that time?’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Fleur, don’t. Don’t do this.’

  ‘Was he there? Was he?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, he was there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At – at that time. That’s all I know, Fleur, I swear.’

  ‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘You bastard. When I needed the truth, needed your help so much, you kept it from me. How could you, Joe, how could you? How did you find out, Joe, and when?’

  ‘Oh – by accident. It was mentioned. By his mother to Chloe. I didn’t tell you for exactly the reasons you should leave this thing alone. None of it means a thing, it’s the merest shred of information; he says he likes to keep it quiet because he failed so totally, didn’t even get tested. Oh, Fleur, what would have been the point of telling you?’

  ‘I would have known,’ she said quietly. ‘It would have been something to go on.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Nothing at all. Now I don’t give a toss about Piers, Fleur, you can do what you will with him; but there are innocent lives here, terribly at risk. Think of Chloe, Fleur, she has no part in all this, she is innocent of any guilt, any blame, she is struggling to make that marriage work. Please, Fleur, I beg of you, leave it alone.’

  Fleur looked at him, and a searing white light seemed to dance in front of her eyes. She felt hot, blazing, ragingly hot, and physically shaky. She stood up and looked down at Joe, and started to speak and all the hurt, all the betrayal she had ever felt were in those words. ‘Don’t talk to me about Chloe, Joe, about hurting Chloe. I can be hurt, that’s fine, I can be abandoned, sent off to America, away from my mother, so that I wouldn’t litter up her life. I can be hurt, left alone while my father went off to Hollywood, and I can be hurt, left alone when he died. I can be hurt, learning all those terrible things about him, and I can be hurt trying to unravel what really happened, what was behind it. And now I can be hurt again, by you betraying me, lying to me, keeping from me the one thing I really need to know, and then you think you can just ask me to leave it all alone. Just to save Chloe, to leave her safe with her famous husband and her perfect children and her undamaged little life. How could you, Joe, how could you? You of all people, you who are supposed to be my friend. OK, OK, so I’ve blown that, and if you weren’t so stupid, so dumb, you’d be able to understand. Well, I can’t leave it all alone, and I won’t, do you understand, because – because –’ She stopped suddenly, unable to go on, her voice dying, smothered by pain and tears.

  Joe was standing up and his face had quite changed: it was tender, and shocked, and there were tears in his own eyes; he put out his hand and touched her face, traced her tears and, for a moment, just a moment, she thought he was going to go on, go forward, and she stood there, staring at him, hardly daring to hope, to think.

  But then he said, and his voice was changed, hesitant, very quiet, ‘I’m sorry, Fleur, but I can’t accept that. I know what you’ve been through, and I know how hard it’s been for you, and I can see what a rather – unhappy view of your family you have. But it does not give you the right to behave as you have. As you are doing. I’m terribly fond of you, Fleur, as I hope you know, but I can’t condone this thing. I’m sorry. It’s callous and amoral and it shocks me. Please, please stop it. For me if for no one else.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Fleur, and she felt a deadly misery creeping into her, a disappointment and a profound sense of betrayal. She stood looking at Joe, who had been her friend for so long, her ally, Joe who had taken the time and trouble to explain things to her, to try to help her, Joe who she had adored for years, who she had fancied rotten, for God’s sake, and in that moment love died, totally, and with it trust, and she felt more lonely than she could ever remember being in her life.

  ‘You can’t? You mean you won’t,’ he said, and his voice was very cold.

  ‘I mean I can’t. If you understood anything, you’d understand that,’ she said and turned and walked out of the hotel, and stood in the street looking for a cab, crying hard, desperately, like a small abandoned child.

  It hit her hard, very hard: what she saw as Joe’s betrayal. She longed to talk about it, to tell Reuben, or maybe Poppy, to receive comfort, support, understanding, but she couldn’t. This was too private, too painful, something she was locked into alone, quite alone now. She felt shocked, almost bereaved; she ached, physically; she felt she had been kicked, bruised, dragged through an assault course. She had more trouble sleeping even than usual; her appetite, usually so healthy, so hearty, failed her; if she ate she developed stomach pains. Tears overcame her: suddenly, shockingly, in meetings, at lunch, over her typewriter. Mick and even Nigel noticed, asked her if she was all right. Fine, she said, fine, glaring at them, hating them too, men, the common enemy.

  And then, as she began to recover, to feel better, a hard, hot anger slowly replaced the pain. And something else. An even stronger, fiercer clarity of vision. She no longer just wanted to hurt Piers Windsor,
and whoever else had damaged, ruined her father: she wanted to hurt all of them, Chloe, Caroline, and most of all now she wanted to hurt Joe, let him learn what it was like to feel misery, rejection, loneliness.

  She was haunted, too, by Joe’s words, his concern for Reuben; his heavy ‘poor bastard’ invaded her head at the most unlikely moments. What kind of person was she, that she could deceive, so remorselessly, someone who loved her so much? She kept pushing the thought aside, but it pursued her.

  ‘Want to talk about it?’ he had said the very next day when she suddenly started to cry over dinner, hot, helpless tears. She shook her head, and forced a smile, and he smiled back, shrugged and said OK; he saw her home and hugged her very close to him on the doorstep, didn’t even suggest he came in.

  ‘Oh, Reuben,’ said Fleur, looking up at him, at his gentle, ugly face, soft with concern for her. ‘Oh, Reuben, you are just the best.’

  She didn’t deserve him, as Joe had said; but he was there and he wanted to be there. She often felt she would have lost all faith in everything without him.

  Background to early Hollywood section of The Tinsel Underneath.

  Extract from Scandals, by Joe Payton. Permission to quote from publishers.

  There can be little doubt that what actually killed Byron Patrick was the Hollywood system. It requires that all the players both on and off screen are absolutely one hundred and one per cent acceptable. They must be agreeable, good-looking, glamorous and well-behaved beyond a certain line. Anything unacceptable, sexually or socially, has to be kept completely off-limits. Hollywood may be filled with cocaine addicts, adulterers, and homosexuals; the wildest indulgences, designed to satisfy the most salacious appetites, may take place within its tinsel walls: all absolutely fine so long as the public does not get to hear about it. A great deal of money and effort goes into buying that silence. The trade-off has to be that the subjects are worth the price. In Byron’s case he was not: not a big enough star to be worth protecting. It was cheaper to junk the investment made in him thus far, and let the scandal sheets do their worst, than to buy them off. Hollywood built him up, and then without a second thought, knocked him down again. He was a victim, in that late summer of 1957, not just of the journalist who wrote the story, or the person who tipped the journalist off, but of the whole tawdry town. He hadn’t a hope; they were all too clever for him.