AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  Introduction to True Love chapter of The Tinsel Underneath.

  If Guinevere Davies was not the love of Piers Windsor’s life, he was certainly hers. She adored him; from the moment she met him until the day he died. She did not only love him, she admired him and his talent intensely; she was fiercely loyal, totally selfless, gave him everything she had, and she staked everything on a desperate gamble when she feared she was losing him and she didn’t know what else she could do.

  Her family are divided on him: her mother, Megan, speaks with an odd fondness for him; her brother, Richard, absolutely loathes him. This is not surprising: Megan is a sensitive, educated woman, clear-sighted, with a piercing sense of humour. Richard’s view is more uncompromising; he saw only a man he didn’t trust who then went on to vindicate that view by, as he saw it, abandoning his sister when she was pregnant.

  Megan recognized Piers’s complexities, and the difficulties he had with relationships, even with her own daughter; she liked him, she enjoyed his company, while fearing for the future of the marriage. It was not, as she saw it, entirely Piers’s fault: what ever is? It grieved her to see her daughter suffer, but she could acknowledge that at least some of the fault could be laid at Guinevere’s door.

  There is a view, propounded by some psychologists, that to become pregnant deliberately, without the knowledge and against the wishes of a partner, is the female equivalent of rape. This was what Guinevere did; she feared she was losing Piers, she couldn’t stand it, and a child, their child, seemed to her a powerful weapon in her battle. A battle she lost: twice. First Piers, who felt the strictures of family life closing in on him like a vice; and then, even more tragically, the baby. And then perhaps a third time, in Piers’s lie: that she had had an abortion, in order to keep the part in The Doctor’s Dilemma. A wicked lie, a selfish, slanderous lie; that she could love him after that bears testimony to her passion for him.

  1970

  Magnus Phillips sat back and took a first, appreciative sip at the glass of claret his publisher had poured for him.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, ‘very nice indeed.’

  ‘Good. Well, it’s nice to see you, Magnus.’

  ‘Nice to see you, Richard. Literally.’

  Richard Beauman looked exactly like the popular conception of a successful publisher. He was very tall and slim and elegant; he had white hair and a rather long face with a hawkish nose and very brilliant brown eyes. He always wore what his enemies called five-piece suits, tailored exquisitely for him at Gieves and Hawkes, hand-made shoes, and a gold pocket watch with a chain. He had been to Winchester and then to Balliol, where he had got a First in English literature. It was virtually impossible to name a book he had not read, he could converse in fluent Latin, played championship chess, and had a ruthless commercial instinct that was renowned not only in England but in America as well. His publishing company, Beaumans, had three imprints: Peerage which published classic literature; Gabriel which published hugely expensive art books; and Impression which published highly commercial fiction and non-fiction and which made the modestly respectable balance sheets of Peerage and Gabriel look like petty cash.

  In the past year, he had published Heaven’s Gates, a steamy saga set in the banking business, Fortunes (another, similar, about a prostitute who came to own a chain of brothels masquerading as hotels) and The House by Magnus Phillips, an explosive study of one or two of the more colourful members of the cabinet. One or other of them had been in the bestseller lists throughout the entire twelve months. Dancers, Magnus Phillips’s new book, was due out in November.

  ‘So to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ said Richard Beauman. ‘You’re right, this is a very good wine.’

  ‘I have got one hell of a book for you, Richard. It makes my balls creep, just thinking about it. I even have a title for it.’

  ‘Oh yes? What is it?’

  ‘The Tinsel Underneath. Quote from Sam Goldwyn. Good one-liner, Goldwyn was. He said, “I’d like to tear down all this false tinsel and show the real tinsel underneath.” Talking about Hollywood.’

  ‘Sounds all right. So what is it, this book? Biographical, I presume. Not about Mr Windsor surely? I thought you’d gone off the idea. I hear he’s in the running for a knighthood in the next birthday honours.’

  ‘No, it was he who went off the idea,’ said Magnus. ‘I stayed with it. Fortunately. Interesting about the knighthood. That might add a few pounds to the bidding for the serial rights.’

  ‘So it is a biography? On Windsor?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Magnus, I do hate riddles.’

  ‘Biographical, yes. Mr Windsor, yes. And a great deal more besides.’

  ‘Indeed? Try and make my balls creep a little, there’s a good chap. Steak all right?’

  ‘OK. I’ll try,’ said Magnus. ‘Steak’s fine, thanks.’

  At the end of the lunch, they walked back in the early spring sunshine to St James’s, where Richard Beauman had his office.

  ‘I’ll talk to your agent, Magnus. I imagine he has a figure in mind.’

  ‘He does indeed. Of course, other publishers would be salivating at this one too.’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Richard Beauman good-naturedly. ‘We don’t have much money in the kitty at the moment, Magnus, I have to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Magnus. ‘Tell Henry that, Richard, I’m sure he’d be interested. Thanks for the lunch.’

  Richard Beauman put his phone down rather wearily an hour later, having heard himself, to his own considerable regret, if not surprise, giving a verbal agreement to an advance of one hundred thousand pounds to Henry Chancellor, Magnus Phillips’s agent – ‘Providing he can really deliver something solid rather than what is after all only a few rather wild and unconnected anecdotes at the moment’ – for the world rights of a book which, as Henry pointed out, would incorporate just about everything that would make the public rush out in their thousands and put their money down on the bookshop counters: fallen idols, famous names, scandal and betrayal, sex and heartbreak, Hollywood glitz, theatrical glamour.

  ‘And it’s all true,’ said Henry in rapturous tones, smiling down at the pad on which he had been doodling throughout the hour. ‘And he’s hardly begun. Now, then, as I understand it, Richard, twenty thousand pounds on signature, and then a further –’

  ‘Hold it, Henry, hold it. No signature even, until I have rather more to go on than what Magnus was talking about over lunch. I want names, interviews, possibly tapes, a fully worked outline with corroborating evidence.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ said Henry calmly. ‘He’s never failed yet. I really don’t know how the man does it, Richard, do you?’

  ‘By being a ruthless conscienceless bastard,’ said Richard.

  ‘Good afternoon, Henry.’

  ‘You’re a ruthless, conscienceless bastard,’ said Caroline, ‘and I wouldn’t trust you further than I could spit. Which isn’t very far.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Magnus, kissing her naked shoulder tenderly. ‘So you shouldn’t. Now look, my darling, I’m going to be away for a few weeks. I don’t want you fretting and thinking I’ve forgotten about you. Because I couldn’t.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh – here, there and everywhere,’ he said, and his dark eyes were very blank as he looked at her. ‘Researching a new book.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ said Caroline, trying to crush a tiny shoot of fear that was thrusting up into her chest.

  ‘Ambition,’ he said.

  Chloe couldn’t ever remember feeling so tired. Not even after having the babies, not even after having the third baby, and Rosemary being ill the day she came home, and Piers insisting she gave dinner – ‘nothing elaborate, darling, just an omelette, anything’ – to a visiting mogul from America.

 
Joe had met her at Liverpool Street that terrible evening, and that added to her distress, knowing what she did about her mother and Magnus; she had found it almost impossible to look at him even, to talk to him, had prayed he would just think it was her own shock. He had taken her straight to the Ethica Clinic in Harley Street and left her with Piers, who was lying looking oddly small, absolutely white, a drip in one arm. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ Roger Bannerman, their GP, had said to her soothingly. ‘We got it just in time, thank God; lucky your nanny hadn’t gone away.’ Yes, said Chloe, yes it was lucky, unbelievably lucky, horrified at herself at what she had done, her cruelty, her insensitivity in attacking Piers for what she had been shown, told, knew was not his fault, putting him and her whole family at risk. She sat by his bed all night, watching him, dry-eyed, terrified that he might suddenly become worse, that his heart might fail; it did happen, it could happen, hating herself; her mind returning from time to time to the dreadful scene at the Moat House, reliving that as well.

  ‘Of course,’ Roger Bannerman said, just a little too firmly, ‘of course it’s so easy to do, taking sleeping pills instead of pain-killers, Poor old Piers was obviously terribly tired, and on top of all that vodka and the red wine for dinner.’ Yes, she had said, yes, it must be terribly easy, she must be more careful in future about leaving him on his own when he was so tired and of course he had been worried about the new play, and his new project for the next year, it was hardly surprising he’d done that, got them muddled.

  Rosemary had met her at the house. ‘I found this,’ she said carefully, giving a note to Chloe. ‘It was on the kitchen table. I thought I’d keep it for you.’

  ‘Rosemary,’ said Chloe, ‘you are quite wonderful, so sensible. You’ve done all the right things, I can never thank you enough.’

  She sat in the taxi, reading the note over and over again, until it bore a groove in her brain: ‘My darling, Please forgive me. I can’t go on any longer. I love you. Piers.’ It had been lying on the kitchen table, Rosemary said, propped against the big salt mill, just a piece of the stiff, deckle-edged paper Piers always used, folded over. No envelope.

  Not too incriminating: not even entirely clear. Only Rosemary, who had been through the attempt in Los Angeles, would have grasped instantly what it meant, gone flying upstairs into Piers’s room (conveniently not locked) and then phoned for the doctor. And only Rosemary would have had the calm, the common sense to have kept the note quietly, for Chloe alone to see, once she had known Piers was safe, was not actually going to die.

  ‘Of course,’ said Roger Bannerman cheerfully the next morning, when he popped into the Ethica to see Piers, and then talked to Chloe outside the room, ‘of course, he hadn’t taken nearly enough to – well, to do anything – drastic. Not that that was the idea, of course.’

  ‘No,’ said Chloe, ‘no, of course not.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, gently, ‘you look all in. Why don’t you go home? He’ll be staying here another day. You’ll need your strength for when he gets home, I’m afraid. Oh and Chloe –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think he should perhaps see a psychiatrist. You know. Just to talk. I know an awfully good man. Nervous exhaustion they call this sort of thing. Professional help can make all the difference.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chloe. ‘Yes, thank you. I might go home. A bit later. I’ll go and see him for a bit now. He seems more himself.’

  ‘Yes. But don’t push him. Don’t question him. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ said Chloe.

  Piers was fretful, almost tearful, contrite.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling, so terribly terribly sorry. About everything. You must forgive me, you must.’ He grasped her arm; his hand felt bony and hot.

  ‘Piers, it’s all right. I do forgive you. For everything. Don’t talk, darling. Just rest.’

  ‘My throat’s so sore,’ he said. ‘It’s ghastly what they do, you know, push a tube down it, then flood your stomach with water, until you – well it was horrific, I came to vomiting, vomiting everywhere, couldn’t breathe –’

  ‘Piers, don’t, please, please,’ said Chloe. She knew exactly what he was doing, making sure she knew what he had been through, had had to endure, making it plain that in spite of his apologies, his self-abasement, he held her at least partly responsible.

  ‘So wonderfully lucky,’ he said, reaching out with his other hand for the glass of water. ‘I’m only allowed tiny sips, you know – so wonderfully lucky Rosemary hadn’t gone out. Goodness knows what might have happened.’

  ‘Goodness knows,’ said Chloe. ‘But she hadn’t. Piers, you must rest now.’ She stroked his forehead gently. ‘Everything’s all right. It’s going to be all right. We must put this behind us. All of it.’

  It was weeks before she discovered that Rosemary had actually told Piers she was not going out but having a TV supper in her room.

  And then, as if that wasn’t enough to cope with, there was this awful, hideous knowledge about her mother and Magnus. That was truly horrible. Any respect Chloe had ever felt for Caroline had gone in that moment, looking down at her on the bathroom floor; all the revulsion and shock she had felt when she had first found the letters, the letters about Fleur, came back, as if it was the first time.

  She just didn’t know what to do about it. She wanted to tell Joe, to warn him, but she knew she couldn’t. Probably shouldn’t. It wasn’t her story to tell and she was incapable anyway of inflicting that kind of pain. So she avoided him, embarrassed, awkward, shunning his offers of lunch, of drinks, his invitations for himself to come over to the house, pretending that it was because of Piers. She knew he was hurt, puzzled, but she didn’t see what else she could do. She was also worried, afraid, about her mother associating with Magnus. He was danger, she felt instinctively: a charming friend if he was on your side, interesting, colourful, amusing, but he was a tabloid journalist of immense influence; there was no telling what he might do with any succulent little story that came across his path. Like Piers Windsor’s wife having an illegitimate sister, who nobody knew about, who the family pretended didn’t exist. She shivered whenever she thought about it; and because she could do nothing else, tried not to think about it very often.

  ‘This is wonderful, Joe. I really like it.’ Caroline looked up from the Sunday Times colour supplement and smiled at him: the first time, it seemed, for weeks.

  ‘Good,’ said Joe. It was a great relief: he had slaved over the bloody thing, a profile of Elton John, for weeks, far longer than the fee justified. Increasingly he felt work was the only thing he was remotely good at: Caroline (despite her sudden warmth) seemed increasingly withdrawn from him; he seemed to have lost Chloe’s affection as well, she was avoiding him, was awkward, tense with him; middle age was stalking him with relentless tenacity; he still trembled when he opened his bank statements.

  They were sitting in the kitchen at the Moat House: it was a perfect summer’s day. Peaceful, golden, undisturbed. The dogs slumbered by the Aga; sunlight drifted in in dusty shafts through the open door; the bees in the honeysuckle that grew around the window were working, noisily, relentlessly. Later Chloe was arriving with the children (but not Piers); a good day, a happy day.

  The phone rang, breaking into the peace: it was Joe’s agent, Will Niven.

  ‘Joe, this is a fantastic piece. Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, but I had to congratulate you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘We should do a book of these profiles.’

  ‘Think we could?’ said Joe, pleased and surprised.

  ‘Yes, I do. Have to find a peg for them. But they’re too good to waste. I even have a title. It’s Love at First Sight.’

  Joe laughed. One of three questions he always asked his interviewees was ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ He said the answers were always intensely revealing. ‘It�
��s certainly a seller.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I’ll look into it. Talking of books, this one your friend Magnus Phillips is working on sounds like dynamite. How does Piers feel about it?’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Joe.

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard. It’s a gloves-off job. Apparently Magnus started researching Piers and his past, and came up with some very interesting stuff. All kinds of excitement. Hollywood and all.’

  ‘Oh, not all those old chestnuts,’ said Joe quickly. He felt rather sick.

  ‘What old chestnuts, Joe?’

  ‘Oh, the slave system, and all that. I can’t believe Piers would give a toss about it.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard,’ said Niven, ‘there’s a lot more to it than the slave system. Of course it’s totally under wraps. His agent is walking around looking like the cat that got the cream, and the bidding’s gone sky high.’

  ‘Isn’t Beauman publishing it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We’re talking American rights here. And serialization. Joe, you must have heard about all this.’

  ‘I’ve been down here a lot lately,’ said Joe.

  He put the phone down and looked at Caroline.

  ‘What on earth is it?’ she said. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘I feel terrible,’ he said and told her what Niven had said.

  Later they went for a walk; Caroline was distraught and he couldn’t quite understand why; it added to his unease. She wasn’t that fond of Piers, and she certainly had no idea of any possible connection between him and Brendan.

  ‘You’ve got to stop it,’ she kept saying. ‘You’ve got to.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Joe. ‘But I don’t think it’s very feasible.’

  He wondered if he ought to warn Chloe, warn Piers. It sounded seriously worrying. What on earth had the stupid fucker thought he was doing, ever suggesting Magnus might write his biography? Vanity, he supposed, the all-consuming, overweening Windsor vanity. He decided he should tell them, picked up the phone on three separate occasions and dialled the number only to put it down again, completely unable to face not only the conversation but the implications of it, the questions they might ask, the answers he might have to give. Every time he thought of Magnus’s questions about Byron Patrick, about the girl, Kirstie Fairfax, of what he would make of the whole story if he ever got hold of it, he felt violently ill. He told himself that Piers had enough people looking out for him to warn him anyway, and that Chloe had enough to worry about for the time being without this. In any case, she was odd, distant with him at the moment; she seemed to want to avoid him. It was sad; he missed her. She was without doubt one of his favourite people: probably his very favourite. Poor little thing. She’d taken on more than any of them had ever suspected when she married Piers.