AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Private property,’ he said, and although he smiled at her, there was a very hard expression in his dark eyes. ‘You’ve obviously been badly brought up.’

  ‘I was very well brought up actually,’ she said, ‘by my grandmother.’

  ‘Would that be Brendan’s mother?’

  ‘Yes, it would.’

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ he said, ‘how pleased I am to see you. I’ve been looking for you for months.’

  Fleur looked at him coolly over her coffee mug. ‘You can’t have tried very hard,’ she said.

  ‘I tried extremely hard. But you have to understand some very brightly painted red herrings were placed in my path. Your mother told me first that she had no idea where you lived, then – now what was it? – “somewhere near Chicago”.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why on earth should she say that?’ said Fleur, her face reluctantly amused.

  ‘I imagine she didn’t want me to find you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fleur, and sat and processed this piece of information. Of course they wouldn’t want Magnus to find her. Not if he was writing a book about Piers. They’d be shitting themselves at the thought he might find her. Well, Joe would. She wondered if Joe had ever told her mother, or Chloe, about her and Piers. Probably not. God, they were a filthy lot. She could actually imagine the conversations. Discussing whether they should tell her not to have anything to do with Magnus, not to tell him anything, if he approached her: deciding that would be a mistake, that she was likely to do the opposite of anything they might say; at that she laughed aloud, at that and at the realization that she actually, finally, had the whip hand over them, all of them.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ said Magnus.

  ‘Oh – nothing.’ She looked at him and then said, ‘There might be things I could tell you. People I could tell you about. That would help you with your research. Do you think that might be an idea?’

  ‘It might,’ said Magnus Phillips.

  Interview Tabitha Levine. Wishes to be anonymous.

  Now look, I do mean anonymous. I was very fond of Piers, and I’m very fond of Chloe, and I don’t want to make her feel worse. But I guess if you’re doing the book anyway, I might as well tell you what I know.

  OK. Two things. I mean without doubt he was sexually ambivalent. Fighting it: sometimes harder than others. But more than that, he was just generally promiscuous. He tried to have an affair with me, but (a) I didn’t fancy him and (b) I just didn’t think it was a very good idea. I mean I was his leading lady, he was directing me, and it gets in the way, that sort of thing, and then it goes wrong and your professional life gets fucked up along with your emotional. But he found it very hard to resist any attractive person. I don’t mean he had to get into bed with all of them, but he liked to make them like him, want him, admire him, enjoy him. He was certainly a pushover for anyone who might be after him.

  The other thing was that he had a really strong moral sense. I know that sounds odd, coming after the promiscuous number, but after all, what’s sex? What does it matter? But I can tell you this, Piers would never ever let anyone down: never gossip; never rat on a friend. He had awful faults, he was vain and phenomenally self-centred, and conceited, and not very honest, and very manipulative. But he was so loyal. You can ask anyone, anyone at all, even his enemies, they’ll all say the same thing. Nobody ever got dropped in the shit by Piers Windsor. That’s why all those stories about Guinevere and the baby were so awful. Piers would just not have left her if or because she was pregnant. He wouldn’t. There had to be another explanation. I do hope you’ve got that one sorted for your book. That would be really cruel, to perpetrate that old myth. In a funny way, he was actually a bit of a victim.

  1970

  ‘Ludovic,’ said Chloe, ‘I’m desperately worried. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Marry me?’ said Ludovic.

  ‘Oh, Ludo, please don’t joke. It isn’t funny.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘Ludovic, please!’

  Ludovic composed his features. His blue eyes settled on Chloe in sober contemplation. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Tell me what’s bothering you.’

  ‘Well obviously,’ said Chloe, ‘this book.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ludovic, ‘yes, the book.’

  ‘You’ve – heard about it?’

  ‘Hard not to, my darling. The press are rather taken with it, are they not?’

  Chloe sighed. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘What does Piers think about it?’

  ‘Piers won’t talk about it,’ said Chloe and her voice had a desperate, slightly wobbly edge to it.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘He says that there’s no point even discussing it, that all we can do is carry on with our lives. The point is, Ludovic, this book could stop him carrying on with his life.’

  ‘Not literally, I hope,’ said Ludovic. He smiled at her, but his voice was gentle; Chloe felt herself growing hot. She lived in terror of Piers’s suicide attempts becoming public knowledge: not least because she felt convinced that on both occasions she had been in large part to blame.

  ‘No. No, of course not. But – oh, Ludovic, I’m so frightened. There are terrible, awful things that book could say about him and –’

  ‘True? Or not?’

  Chloe looked down at her hands; they were, she noticed with some surprise, twisted in the most extraordinary way in her lap. ‘I – don’t know.’

  ‘Chloe,’ said Ludovic, ‘Chloe, look at me. That’s better. Now listen. I might be able to help you and I might not, and certainly, at the very least, I can recommend a very good libel lawyer. But what you have to understand is that he does need to know the truth. If what the book says is libellous, then we can do a great deal about it. Stop its publication altogether – possibly. Threaten the publishers with legal action if they go ahead. If, on the other hand, there is some truth in it, then it becomes very much more difficult.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, there is a great deal of difference between knowing something bad is going to be published about you, and fearing something is going to be published about you which is simply not true. Now which of those two things are we talking about here?’

  ‘Well I – oh God, Ludovic, it’s so difficult. I just don’t know what to think, what to do . . .’ Chloe’s voice rose in a near wail.

  Ludovic smiled at her tenderly. ‘Well, you certainly don’t have to talk to me, my darling. Save it all for the lawyer. But in any case, it won’t be for you to talk. You can’t do anything. The defamation, if such it is, is a defamation of Piers. The action has to go through him. Not you.’

  ‘Yes, but – I mean if he won’t do anything.’

  ‘Then we must try and persuade him. Unless it simply isn’t worth worrying about. I mean is there not the slightest possibility that this book is simply a rather racy biography?’

  ‘Absolutely none,’ said Chloe, trying to smile. ‘Dynamite is the word that’s most bandied about.’

  ‘Yes, I have seen that one. It’s Magnus Phillips, isn’t it? Writing it? I never did like the fellow.’

  ‘I did,’ said Chloe, with a feeble smile. ‘He’s Ned’s godfather, you know. I always thought he was – well, interesting. Kind, in a rather rough way. Joe always said he was a baddy.’

  ‘Did he indeed? Poor Joe, getting beaten up in the Savoy over it.’

  ‘He wasn’t beaten up,’ said Chloe indignantly, ‘he did the beating.’

  ‘He must have taken Phillips very much by surprise. He’s about half his size.’

  ‘He is not,’ said Chloe, ‘he’s much taller than Magnus. He’s thinner, that’s all.’

  ‘I can see I shall have to watch Mr Payton. He seems to have a considerable slice of your heart.’

  ‘He does,’
said Chloe. ‘I love him very much. He’s been a second father to me.’

  ‘But he’s no longer with your mother.’

  ‘No,’ said Chloe shortly.

  ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’

  ‘She – was having an affair with Magnus Phillips.’

  ‘Fuck me!’ said Ludovic. ‘I beg your pardon, Chloe. I had no idea. This is more complex than I realized.’

  ‘Oh, Ludovic, it’s a lot worse than that. I can’t tell you how much worse.’

  ‘Look,’ said Ludovic, ‘it’s nearly lunch-time. Why don’t we pop round the corner to the Savoy, and you can tell me all about it?’

  ‘Ludovic, I wouldn’t dream of telling you all about it in the Savoy. Of all places. I think the entire family should steer very clear of the Savoy for quite a time to come. Just think of who might be listening. I really don’t even know if I ought to tell you all about it anyway.’

  ‘You should, my darling, otherwise you are going to do something desperate. I can see it in your exquisite little face. And then I’ll find a very good, very kind, and very ugly libel lawyer to take it over. Now I suggest we have lunch in a locked room, with all the light fittings checked for bugs. How about that? In here?’

  ‘Yes, that’d be lovely,’ said Chloe, trying to smile.

  When she’d gone, after picking her way half-heartedly through a smoked salmon sandwich and describing rather slowly and haltingly precisely what she thought the book might say, Ludovic picked up his telephone.

  ‘Nicholas? Ludovic Ingram. Got a very knotty little problem here. Can I come and see you? What? Well, because I have a tasty little morsel for you and besides you owe me a lunch. Friday’d be fine. Cheers.’

  ‘I’ve written to Rose and asked if we can go and see her,’ said Fleur. ‘She is really nice, a kind, sweet person. She and my father had a – well, a relationship when they were young.’

  ‘Really? Were they close?’

  ‘Very close. I mean they lived together. Until he got taken up by Naomi MacNeice. Then he had to drop her.’

  ‘Had to?’ said Magnus.

  ‘Yeah, Naomi just told him Rose had to go.’

  ‘And how did Rose feel about that?’

  ‘Oh, she was just amazing about it. I mean she was when she talked to me about it. I don’t suppose she felt quite that good at the time. She said Hollywood was like that, that kind of thing just happened all the time, that you got used to it, that she hadn’t liked it but she’d understood.’

  ‘What a remarkable person she must be,’ said Magnus. He sounded slightly unconvinced.

  ‘Yes, well she is,’ said Fleur defensively. ‘It’s hard to believe she’s so world-famous and successful. She’s so – real somehow. I’m sure she’ll talk to you.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a husband, does she? At the moment?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. Why, are you thinking of applying for the job?’ asked Fleur drily.

  ‘I don’t think Miss Sharon would suit me too well,’ said Magnus.

  ‘But you’d suit her, I suppose?’

  ‘In some ways, yes, I dare say I would.’

  Sitting on the plane going back to New York, Fleur thought over this remark and wondered why it had made her so cross. She finally decided it typified Magnus Phillips’s arrogance. He was the most arrogant man she had ever met. He made Nigel Silk and even Julian Morell look quite self-deprecating.

  She wished she knew what she really thought about Magnus. Whether she was mad to trust him; whether she liked him; whether she ought to be helping him at all. He was infuriatingly vague about what he might be writing about her father: said he would let her read it when he had everything in place. Which would be a while yet, he said. He had a lot of – what was the phrase – oh yes, digging to do yet. She had told him so much, told him to go and see her aunts, to get a fuller, more perfect picture of her father, talked about him for hours herself, about how perfect he had been, loving, caring, fun. Magnus had told her just to go on talking, made tapes of it, asking her the occasional question; she was amazed how skilful he was at getting her to talk, prompting half-forgotten memories, half-lost emotions. She had been very brave and told him about Rose and the things she had said. She had shown him the article in Inside Story; and she had even told him about Piers and how he had denied being in Hollywood at the same time with her father – and how he had looked when he had heard her name. She had even told him about the mysterious Zwirns. He’d better be on the level, she thought, picking rather half-heartedly at the approximation to food that Pan American called lunch, he’d just better be. She’d made an awful fool of herself if he wasn’t.

  But he was. She was sure he was. She was slightly worried that she’d rushed her judgement, tempted into recklessness by the empathy she had with him, his swift, almost astonishing grasp of how she felt, by what she could recognize, even as she responded to it, as skilful, clearly well-practised questioning – not even questioning, a sort of easing out of answers. But after a week of fairly intense exposure to him, she still felt oddly easy about him. He was one of the good guys. OK, he’d had an affair with her mother, when she’d still been with Joe, and he’d written a couple of fairly ruthless books, and a whole lot of very revelatory articles, but she found his justification for doing it – for telling everyone the truth – totally acceptable. It was her own morality exactly: an end you cared about justified any means. Never mind hurting, getting hurt, along the way: if something mattered enough, it was worth anything.

  Joe sat in his flat, feeling very bleak. He missed Caroline more than he had even expected. The fierce pain, the hurt pride that had assaulted him when he had first discovered she was having an affair with Magnus Phillips had become a dull, throbbing nausea that invaded everything he did. Worse even than the discovery itself had been the discovery of how long it had been going on: a quick fling he could have forgiven, but not nearly a year, a year of subterfuge, of duplicity. A year while she had greeted him smiling, warmly even, on Friday evenings, when he arrived at the Moat House, talked to him, listened to him, fed him, laughed with him, slept with him occasionally, led him to believe she was still fond of him, still needed him, and all the time she had been doing all those things, not just fucking – no doubt a great deal more and more enthusiastically – but talking to, listening to, eating with, laughing with Magnus Phillips.

  ‘Who else knew?’ he had said, sitting in the chair, the battered old chair that she had designated his, because it suited him, she said, by the fire in the drawing room at the Moat House.

  ‘No one,’ she said, ‘no one at all, except Chloe, only Chloe and then only for a very short time.’

  ‘How could you?’ he said. ‘How could you, with that creep, who is working to destroy your daughter’s life, her happiness, both your daughters’ probably?’

  She had looked at him in silence, her hands spread helplessly, and said she did not know, she could see how terrible it looked, indeed it was terrible, but she had seemed not to be able to help it, had decided, every time, to finish with Magnus, not to go on, had felt it as shocking as he did, but somehow – well, somehow it had not been possible. Not just for another few days. Or weeks. She had not attempted to excuse herself, had not asked him to try to understand, to forgive her, like most unfaithful wives: had simply said she understood how he felt, and she would feel the same. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse at the time: looking back he admired her honesty. Her honesty had been one of the most important things about her: its betrayal had been what hurt most.

  Well, it was over. It had to be over. He couldn’t go back to her now. Too much had been destroyed. Even if they both wanted it, he couldn’t imagine anything being sufficiently powerful even to begin to bring them together. The rift was too shockingly wide. He would have to set her and life with her aside and somehow, some way, begin again. With some
one very different and new. He wasn’t at all sure he had the stomach for it; maybe he should accept the fact that it was all over, that he was to spend the rest of his life leading a life of celibate solitude. It didn’t look like a very happy prospect. He was only thirty-nine, and he seemed to be all washed up. No wives, no children, no one even to talk to. Even Chloe was avoiding him: he wondered what on earth he had done to her. Maybe she was simply embarrassed by her mother’s behaviour. He had just decided, whatever the reason, she was too big an absence in his life, to confront her and ask her what the matter was, was sitting indeed with his hand on the phone, when it rang.

  ‘Is that Joe Payton?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Joe, this is Fenella Maxwell.’

  Joe felt a strong urge to stand up. Of all the women editors in London at the moment, Fenella Maxwell of Life Style was the most powerful and successful. She was also extremely attractive.

  ‘Good morning, Fenella,’ he said.

  ‘Joe, are you busy at the moment?’

  ‘Depends,’ said Joe.

  ‘Well, how busy would you be if I asked you to interview Rose Sharon?’

  ‘Not at all busy.’

  ‘Good, because she’s coming to London. To promote her new film. I put in a request, and she said she’d do it if you could write it. She said she liked the way you wrote. Have you ever met her?’

  ‘Yes, once,’ said Joe slowly, ‘only briefly. In LA. I was doing a story on the Brits there, and she was at a party at Jackie Bisset’s studio. I didn’t think I’d made that much impression.’

  ‘Well, obviously you did. Anyway, you’d better make another one. Call her agent and fix a time; she hits town the week after next according to the Celebrity Bulletin. Staying at the Savoy.’