AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Magnus? Joe Payton. I’d like to talk.’

  ‘Sure.’ The voice was blank, easy. Bastard, thought Joe, bastard.

  ‘American Bar at the Savoy? Tomorrow evening? Six thirty?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Magnus.

  Joe got there at six, so determined was he to be in control of the conversation. He was still furious, shakingly furious – and scared too. Of a great many things, and one dark, stalking menace in particular. One he hardly dared even look at.

  Magnus arrived at exactly six thirty, smiling, relaxed; he looked suntanned, sleek. He held out his hand to Joe; Joe shook it briefly.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have a bourbon. I’ve been in the States a bit lately. Developed a taste for it.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said Joe. ‘Researching your book?’

  ‘Researching my book. Fascinating stuff, Joe. Of course you may be familiar with just a little of it.’

  ‘Magnus,’ said Joe, ‘what exactly are you going to do?’

  ‘Write a book, Joe. About Piers, and his great successes. I hear he’s talking about doing Othello, playing Iago and the Moor on alternate nights; is that right? Yes, I thought so, and he’s up for the knighthood and then there’s the Oscars, three for the Dream, the man is clearly a genius. And the gorgeous young wife and the perfect family: truly the gods have smiled upon him. All good stuff.’

  ‘Magnus,’ said Joe, ‘I am not a complete fool.’

  ‘No, Joe, I know you’re not. Oh, excellent, drinks. I’ve had a tough day, talking to American publishers.’

  ‘Magnus,’ said Joe, ‘do you realize the damage you’re going to do? If you write what I think you may be going to write?’

  ‘I’m going to write the truth,’ said Magnus. ‘I have a great regard for the truth, Joe. Always have had.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Joe. ‘That seems a fairly spurious justification for wrecking lives, to me.’

  ‘Joe, if people behave well, the truth can’t harm them. If they behave badly – correction, if they behave badly and then try to cover that behaviour up, then in my opinion they deserve everything they get. Piers Windsor is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing, vain creature; what’s more, he originally came to me, Joe, suggested I might write his biography. Now what he had in mind was clearly rather different from what he’s going to get: but the fact remains he was seeking, overtly seeking, a great slug of sycophancy between hard covers. I find that rather distasteful. He can hardly blame me if in the course of my investigating his unarguably golden past, I find a little dross. Can he?’

  ‘That’s shit and you know it,’ said Joe. ‘Think of Chloe, think of the children; you’re a family friend, or supposed to be, Ned’s godfather; think of – well, all the others involved. Christ, I don’t like the guy, but I really don’t feel he deserves this.’

  ‘It’s not shit, Joe. It’s hard fact. I’m sorry for Chloe, sure, but I’m more sorry for her because she’s married to the bastard, being manipulated by him. These suicide attempts, what kind of creep does that? To someone like Chloe? Jesus, Joe, it turns me up.’

  ‘You turn me up,’ said Joe, ‘trying to justify what you’re doing.’

  ‘And what precisely do you think I’m doing?’ said Magnus. There was a dangerous look now in his almost black eyes.

  ‘Making an obscene amount of money. Increasing your own reputation, feeding your own ego. Setting yourself up as the arch-exponent of the publish-and-be-damned revelations.’

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ said Magnus, ‘I already have an obscene amount of money, as you put it. In my bank account at this very moment is probably ten times more than my father earned in his entire life. Without any input from this little number. My ego is in no danger of starvation. It was actually born slightly overweight. As for my reputation it probably stands to be damaged rather than enhanced by all this.’

  ‘Well, why the fuck are you doing it?’ said Joe, wishing his voice sounded slightly less desperate.

  ‘Above all, because it is the most riveting, fascinating project I’ve ever happened upon,’ said Magnus simply. He drained his glass, signalled at the waiter. ‘Same again, please. Where was I? Oh, yes. It’s got everything, Joe. Sex, scandal, household names, nostalgia. Wonderful stuff.’

  ‘Nostalgia, eh?’ said Joe.

  ‘Nostalgia. And coincidence. Extraordinary how stories, lives cross, tangle, and then weave into a pattern. Haven’t you found that yourself? Again and again. When you were researching something? So yes, indeed, plenty of nostalgia. It’s a most crucial part of the story.’

  He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a packet of Disques Bleus, offered one to Joe. Joe shook his head. Magnus lit the cigarette, and the pungent smell of strong French tobacco filled the air. It increased Joe’s sense of panic.

  ‘Look,’ said Magnus and his dark eyes were amused, watchful. ‘Look, Joe, I know what you really want, you want to know exactly what I’m going to write, and of course I’m not going to tell you. Nobody knows that, not my publisher, not my agent, no one. To be absolutely honest, I don’t know myself yet. I’m still digging. This is one hell of a story, Joe. I can’t let it go.’

  Joe felt very sick. He was afraid to say any more, any more at all, for fear of giving something away, something that Magnus had not discovered; but he thought back to the conversation he and Magnus had had in El Vino’s, all those months earlier, the apparently disconnected questions about Byron Patrick and Kirstie Fairfax and he knew without doubt that it was all going to go in, Brendan, Caroline, Fleur. He decided to risk one last, dangerous, double-edged question.

  ‘Have you thought about what this will do to me and – and to Caroline?’

  ‘Joe, really! I know you’re very fond of Chloe, but if you were honest, you’d surely admit you’d quite like to see Piers squirming a bit. And Caroline is a very beautiful, very self-contained, successful woman of – what? Well, forty-something. She has wealth, position, an adoring family. Do you really think the revelation of some youthful indiscretion, twenty-five years ago, will hurt her so much? Of course not. Her shoulders are broader than that. If they’re not, they should be.’

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ said Joe. Shock waves were going through him, increasing in violence with every one. Somehow, somehow Magnus Phillips knew about Fleur. And Caroline knew he knew. No wonder she had been so distressed. Christ almighty. This got worse every minute. How the fuck had he known? How could he have found out? And then he thought of other things, all slotting neatly into one another, Caroline’s distancing from him, Caroline’s voice saying ‘that’s what Magnus said’, when he had made some comment or other on Piers, Chloe’s awkwardness, embarrassment with him recently. She obviously knew. No doubt half London knew. God, they must all think he was a fool. Which he was. A blind, bloody fool. He picked up his glass and noticed his hand was shaking violently.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes, well, you’re entitled to your opinion,’ said Magnus Phillips easily. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t manged to change it in any way.’

  Joe stood up. His glass of Scotch was still full, and the ice in it had not yet melted. He picked it up and threw it into Magnus’s face, very hard. One of the cubes hit him in the eye, clearly hurt.

  Magnus didn’t flinch, merely picked up a napkin and wiped his face with it, picked the ice-cubes off the front of his suit where they had settled and set them down on the table. The waiter had rushed forward, was signalling at the barman for help.

  Magnus waved him away. ‘Don’t worry. It really doesn’t matter. Just get me another bourbon, will you. Joe, you must read the book. It may not be exactly what you expect. In fact I’m sure it won’t be.’

  Joe grabbed Magnus by the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. He was very strong and heavy, but he was taken by surprise. Joe pulled
back his fist and punched him very hard in the face, then sent him staggering into his chair.

  Magnus stood up again immediately; a trickle of bood was emerging from his nose, his mouth looked slightly odd, but his eyes were still almost amused. He took hold of Joe by his lapels and said, ‘This is no way to play this, Joe. No way at all.’

  Then he pushed him aside and stalked out of the bar.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Caroline. She had the Daily Mail; there was a picture of Magnus, leaving the Savoy through the swing door, holding a handkerchief to his nose, and another rather old and unflattering one of Joe. ‘Dogfight in the Savoy,’ said the headline. ‘Rival hacks in punch-up.’

  ‘How on earth did they get this? How did a photographer just happen to be there? Joe, you are a fool.’

  ‘There are always journalists in that bar,’ said Joe. ‘One of them must have phoned his paper. Oh, I don’t know, Caroline, I was only trying to help.’

  ‘Well all you’ve done,’ said Caroline, ‘is make things worse. Have you read this?’

  ‘No, but I can imagine what it says.’

  ‘Well, stop imagining and listen. “Magnus Phillips, author of the hot seller The House, a real-life study of politics, and currently working on a biography of actor Piers Windsor, was in a brawl yesterday at the Savoy Hotel, with a member of Windsor’s family, journalist Joe Payton. The waiter who served them said they had been engaged in a heated discussion when Payton threw his drink at Phillips and then pulled him to his feet and punched him in the face. Both Payton and Phillips refused to comment on whether the disagreement concerned the book which is rumoured to be fairly sensational in content. Piers Windsor, whose film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has just won three Oscars, and who is working on a new production of Othello, is confidently expected to get a knighthood in the forthcoming birthday honours. Both Piers Windsor and his young wife, Chloe, were unavailable for comment yesterday.”

  ‘God,’ said Caroline, ‘this gets worse and worse. I can’t believe you did this, Joe. What on earth did you think you’d achieve?’

  ‘Personal satisfaction, I suppose,’ said Joe, ‘and I can assure you I did.’

  ‘Well, I’m delighted. Chloe just rang. She says Piers is distraught.’

  ‘What a shame,’ said Joe. ‘Not grateful, I suppose, that I was trying to help?’

  ‘Joe, I don’t think he quite saw it as help.’

  Joe looked at her. She was very pale, and her eyes were very hard as she met his. ‘Well, thanks for your support,’ he said. ‘Much appreciated.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ she said. ‘It was such a dangerous, stupid thing to do.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ he said and anger, sick, fierce anger shot through him, giving him courage. ‘Well now, talking of dangerous, stupid things, Caroline, would you mind telling me how Magnus Phillips came to hear of what he describes as your youthful indiscretion?’

  An hour later, he drove away from the Moat House, his battered old leather suitcase on the back seat filled with the very few things he had moved down there.

  He had always thought he never liked the place; but when he looked back at it, just before he drove away, its image was blurred with his tears.

  1970

  Fleur could never remember feeling so sick-scared. She just hoped it didn’t show; thank God for the darkness. She knew her face was parchment white, that her mouth, for all the determined firmness of its smile, was quivering; she could feel the prickle of sweat breaking out in her armpits, the clamminess of her hands; her stomach was heaving, her bowels churning. One more minute, one more moment even and she would have to make a rush for the toilet.

  As if from very far away now, she could hear the voice, the voice on which she was rather oddly trying to fix her concentration, and yet at the same time to escape; she felt a hand in the darkness reach out for hers and resisted the temptation to grip it. She was not going to give herself away, show how much she cared; that would be a weakness she knew she would regret for ever.

  ‘And the winner is’ – another stifling pause – ‘Browne Phillips Ivy for “Just Morton’s”.’ A roar of triumph from their table, of applause all around the room; there were hands pushing her to her feet, clapping her back, and Baz Browne was standing up, ushering her and Ricky Pentry forward, and she was walking up through the long tangle of tables to the podium, and running, running up the steps, pushing back her hair, laughing at Ricky, and they stood there, holding it between them, the treasure, the holy grail, the advertising industry’s top creative award, the Golden Pen, and she looked out into the huge room, a blur of smiling faces and fluttering hands and felt, for the first time in her whole life, not just triumph, not just delight, but absolute self-assurance.

  ‘To Fleur and Ricky! The stars!’ Baz Browne raised his glass to the two of them, sitting there, the centre of attention, as people ebbed and flowed around them, congratulating them. Mick diMaggio had been one of the first at the table, hugging her, telling her she was wonderful; Poppy had rushed to her side, her eyes streaming with tears; Nigel Silk had walked over, more slowly, but smiling in genuine pleasure none the less and raised her hand to his lips. Reuben, who had been invited as part of the Morton team, and who was sitting across the table from her, had said nothing, but had pushed a note across to her on which he had written ‘Good.’ Sol Morton, who had been massaging her thigh with great enthusiasm most of the evening, or at least at every moment of the evening when Sylvia Morton was not watching him, now had his arm fixed extremely tightly around her waist and refused to take it away; Matthew Phillips had kissed her, discreetly, and told her he was very proud of her, in his drawling Boston accent; and Col Ivy, sitting on her other side, had told her she was a great girl and he would like to see her first thing in the morning in his office.

  Much much later, they left: for the Four Seasons, where there was more champagne, more laughter, more congratulations; and then finally, at half past two, when she was so drunk she could hardly stand, Reuben said he thought it was time to go, and led her out to the limo waiting to take them home, courtesy of Browne Phillips Ivy, and they drove off almost as if they had just been married, with the entire party waving to them from the kerbside.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Fleur, settling against him with a sigh of pure pleasure, ‘that was just the best. Wasn’t it? Didn’t you think so? Can you even believe that all happened?’

  ‘It was OK,’ said Reuben. But his smile as he looked down at her was brilliant.

  Fleur was always turned on sexually by her work; tonight she was frantic with hunger for Reuben. She half ran up the stairs, dragging him after her, fell on him on the bed, biting, kissing, stroking, wanting him. They made love for a long time, slowly, exquisitely, and as she rose to her final climax, soaring flying into it, it seemed to her to echo the soaring, flying joy of the whole evening, of knowing she had made it, she was someone, she had arrived. And as she opened her eyes, looked into Reuben’s, saw the love there, she was ashamed, ashamed of the absolute selfishness of herself and the way she behaved. She got up, fetched them some water, lay in the crook of his arm, wondering why he loved her so much, wishing she could love him in the same way.

  ‘I’d like to marry you,’ he said suddenly, and she laughed, laughed aloud, said, ‘Oh Reuben, really,’ and then she turned and looked at him, smiling, so sure he was joking, and saw the hurt, the pain that she should think such a thing; suddenly desperate to make amends, to stay on her high, to take him back up with her, and because she was so fond of him, loved him so dearly, she said, and her panic rose higher with each word, ‘Yes, Reuben, I’d like that too.’

  Fleur got into the office early the next morning nursing a formidable hangover: award or no award, she had a meeting with Bernard Stobbs at eleven and she’d promised him an ad for his latest baby, a series of art books for children; and she had to see Col Ivy at ten.

/>   Col was smiling, almost effusive, plied her with coffee and said he would like to give her a raise of ten thousand dollars a year. ‘We’re very pleased with you. Very pleased. Well done. Miss FitzPatrick –’

  ‘Yes, Mr Browne?’

  ‘There could be a vacancy for a creative group head in the pipeline. I’d like you to think about it. Of course it would mean you moving to different accounts, but – well, put it into your back tooth, as my old grandmother used to say, and let me know if you want to talk some more.’

  ‘I will,’ said Fleur. ‘Thank you.’

  She left the office, and walked rather slowly down the corridor, her heart thumping. She really was doing it, making it; she was becoming all the things she wanted to be, getting all the things she knew she wanted to have. Except one. Except still one.

  ‘Fleur? Sol Morton.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Sol. How’s your head?’

  ‘My head’s fine,’ said Sol, who contended that hangovers were all in the mind, their only victims hapless no-hopers who shouldn’t drink at all if they couldn’t carry it. ‘Fleur, I’d like to have lunch with you soon. You and Reuben. No one else.’