AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

‘Yes,’ said Fleur, ‘I know Magnus Phillips. And I may as well tell you, I’ve been – well, helping him a little. With this book.’

  Chloe watched herself, quite detachedly, with a sense of slight surprise, walk forward and slap Fleur very hard across the face. She heard Joe and Caroline and Piers all say her name at once: she watched herself look at them, very calm, very contemptuous, saw herself turn round, walk out of the room, go into the kitchen, bury her head in her arms on the table.

  She didn’t know how long she had been there, one minute, ten, an hour, when Joe came in. He looked very distressed, sat down, put his arm round her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Chloe,’ he said, ‘so sorry.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Did I know what?’

  ‘Well – that she was helping Magnus Phillips. With his enquiries. As they say.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no of course not. But I did know she’d come to London. I’m sorry. Caroline and I were going to warn you. But we couldn’t get hold of you, and we had no idea she would come here.’

  ‘She’s awful, Joe. Horrible. So hard, so – angry.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, she is. Very angry. But –’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘She does have reason to be angry. Maybe not with you directly. But with all of us. The family. And Piers.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘Well she’s not alone there.’ She was silent for a while; then she said, ‘Joe, what is all this about? What possible connection can Fleur’s father have with this book?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I know what connection Fleur thinks there is.’

  ‘What?’

  Joe told her.

  Fleur sat looking round the room. Nobody was talking. Her face hurt. She would have died rather than show it, admit it, but it did. It stung and ached, and it felt very hot. Chloe had hit it very hard.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Reuben gently, ‘maybe we should leave it.’

  Caroline looked at him coldly. ‘What on earth do you mean, leave it? Leave what?’

  He smiled at her, his strange, crumpled smile. ‘All of it. For now.’

  ‘Well of course we can’t leave it,’ said Caroline. ‘I never heard of anything so ridiculous.’

  Fleur stared at her, and thought how extraordinary it was that in this gathering of her family, her sister, her sister’s husband, someone who was to all intents and purposes her stepfather, the one person she knew least, liked least, was her own mother. God, how she didn’t like her. Cold, unfeeling bitch. She had been a great deal better off without her all these years. It had been a good day for her when Caroline had handed her over to her father.

  She stood up. ‘I think Reuben’s right. We’re all tired. We’re not making any sense. We can talk tomorrow.’

  Piers looked relieved, just slightly less distraught, yet clearly not wanting to seem as if he was opting out.

  ‘Well, I –’

  At which point Jean Potts appeared, looking more distraught, more embarrassed than anyone, and spoke to him very quietly. He looked at her for a long time, then said, ‘All right, I’ll come. Will you all excuse me? I have to take a phone call.’

  Caroline watched him as he left the room; then she too stood up. ‘If you come with me,’ she said to Fleur and Reuben, ‘I’ll show you to your rooms.’

  They followed her up the stairs; she turned on the first landing and said, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re on the nursery floor. This one is full.’

  ‘Shit a brick,’ said Fleur to Reuben, ‘not the nursery floor. Oh my.’

  They were in adjacent rooms separated by a large linen cupboard.

  ‘They’re all unreal,’ said Fleur, walking into Reuben’s room. He was already in bed, naked, looking thinner than usual. ‘No wonder they behave so badly.’

  ‘They don’t all behave badly,’ said Reuben. ‘Chloe doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Fleur. ‘She hit me.’

  ‘With good reason,’ he said and pulled the blankets up.

  ‘She’s exactly what I thought,’ said Fleur determinedly, ‘a spoilt, ridiculous, pathetic bitch.’

  ‘You don’t really think that,’ said Reuben.

  There was a long silence. Then Fleur said, sounding surprised even to herself, ‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think I do.’

  Chloe was lying in bed in the dark when Piers came in. He said, ‘Chloe?’

  ‘Go away. Just go away,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, I can’t.’

  ‘Piers, please!’

  ‘Chloe, I have to talk to you.’

  He sat down on the bed. She was grateful for the dark; she didn’t have to look at him.

  ‘Chloe,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Piers?’

  ‘Chloe, the father of your baby – was it – was it Ludovic?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice sounding dead, heavy, ‘yes, it was.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘I – God, Piers, I don’t know what I feel about anything. I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Has it been going on long?’

  ‘Quite long. Yes.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said and started to cry.

  ‘Piers, for God’s sake. I think that’s a little hypocritical. You’ve been having an affair with my sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know she was your sister.’

  ‘And I suppose that makes all the difference?’ she said, her voice rising, sitting up in bed, switching on the light suddenly, savagely. His face was tear-stained, he looked odd, not himself.

  ‘A little. I think it makes her behaviour worse than mine.’

  ‘I think we’re splitting hairs here,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Piers, why?’

  ‘Chloe, I don’t know why. Why I have affairs with anyone.’

  ‘Men or women?’ she asked and saw him wince.

  Then, ‘Yes,’ he said, very low. ‘I suppose I want to be needed. Wanted.’

  ‘Oh, really!’ she said. ‘Well that’s a fine excuse, Piers. What if I want to be needed? What then? Do we all go around sleeping with people just because we want to be needed?’

  ‘You had an affair with Ludovic.’

  ‘Yes, I did. After years and years of struggling, of trying to be loyal, of trying to accept your behavour, of trying to understand you. And then realizing I never could.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, quieter still.

  ‘Piers,’ she said, changing the subject, with shocking speed, ‘Piers, is it true what Fleur thinks?’

  ‘And what does Fleur think? Does anyone know?’

  ‘She thinks you knew her father in Hollywood. All those years ago. Did you, Piers? Did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I knew him quite well.’

  ‘And did you do it, Piers?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘What she thought, did you betray him, did you sell his story to the magazine?’

  There was a long silence; then he said, ‘No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. I would never betray a friend.’

  ‘You betrayed me.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Oh, really.’

  ‘Chloe, please!’

  ‘Well, then, do you know who did?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I know who did. At least I think so.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, it does. It’s obsessed Fleur all her life apparently, so it does, yes, matter to me.’

  He stared at her; he seemed about to speak. And then the phone rang sharply by her bed; she picked it up. ‘Yes? Chloe Windsor.’

  ‘I have a person-to-person
call from Santa Barbara, California,’ said the operator, ‘for Mr Piers Windsor. Is Mr Windsor there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chloe, rage stabbing through her, ‘yes, he’s here.’ She handed the phone to Piers, as if it was going to burn her. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, ‘it’s from Santa Barbara. Your friend Mr Zwirn no doubt. Take it, Piers, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Or you. Any more.’

  He looked at her in silence for a long time; then he walked out of the room. She waited until he had picked up the phone in his study, then put the receiver down. She had no wish to hear a single word.

  She lay for a while, waiting, praying he wouldn’t come back. It was very quiet. She suddenly felt dirty, contaminated. She got up cautiously, went into the bathroom, ran a bath. She lay in it for a long time, for almost an hour, until the water was growing cold. Then she got up and wrapped herself in a bathrobe; she felt desperately tired and very sick. She couldn’t begin to think what she might do next, what might happen in the morning. All she wanted now was to sleep, to rest, to recover just a little. She was just going to crawl back into bed when she heard Ned calling her name on the baby alarm; she ran down the corridor to the room where he was sleeping. He had not really woken; he was lying there, tousled, sweetly restless, obviously in the throes of a bad dream. She climbed into the small bed beside him, took him in her arms, and fell almost immediately asleep.

  And so she did not hear Piers knocking quite loudly on her door, did not find the note he pushed underneath it, until just before seven the next morning, when the sun was already rising in the sky, and the day hot and still again, after the storm, and Jean Potts was standing in the doorway of Ned’s room, her face contorted with grief, telling her she must come downstairs at once because Piers had been found dead, down at the stables, lying in Dream Street’s stall, an empty bottle of whisky and another of sleeping pills in the straw beside him.

  July – August 1972

  ‘Now listen,’ said Joe, ‘you did not kill him. He killed himself.’

  ‘No, but you don’t understand.’ She was twisting and turning in her chair, shredding tissues endlessly. ‘He killed himself because I was so horrible to him. I told him about Ludovic, I was so angry with him about Fleur, I asked him about – about, you know, about Brendan. I shouldn’t have done it, Joe, it was terrible, you know he’s unstable, he’s done it twice before, I should have been more careful –’

  ‘Darling Chloe,’ said Joe, and his voice was very firm, very tender, ‘he didn’t do it twice before, he went through the motions, under very carefully controlled conditions. Which he did again this time. It was always the same pattern, the notes, or the positioning, so someone was bound to find him. And the method, pills and alcohol which are slow. If he really wanted to die, he would have shot himself –’ He stopped suddenly, aware that he was making matters worse.

  Chloe stared at him, her eyes huge in her white face. ‘Exactly. He did not want to die. He wrote me a note, I should have found it, should have done something.’

  ‘But you didn’t find it, because you were with Ned. You didn’t ignore it, darling, you just didn’t find it.’

  ‘I know. But I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, Joe, I shouldn’t. It was such a terrible thing to do, I should have shut up, kept quiet, it was so wrong, but – but –’

  ‘Chloe, you’ve kept quiet for a very long time. He drove you to it. In the end. He had behaved appallingly to you.’

  ‘No, he hadn’t, Joe, he hadn’t, not really. He told me often, just these last few weeks, he loved me, he wanted us to sort things out, and then – then last night, when it all seemed so terrible, I wanted to hurt him, to pay him back for – well, for things. Oh, Joe –’

  Her voice rose to a wail; she looked dreadful, sitting there, her face ravaged, her hair wild, shaking violently. Joe felt totally helpless. Jean Potts came in. She was white-faced but very calm.

  ‘Mr Payton, is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe, ‘yes, there is. Could you call Bannerman, get him down. I think we need him . . .’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Chloe fretfully, pushing him away. ‘I don’t want to be sedated, or soothed, I have to see this through, I have to,’ and she started crying again, loudly, shockingly.

  ‘I’ll get some tea,’ said Jean hastily.

  ‘I’ll come and fetch it,’ said Joe and followed her out to the kitchen. ‘Call Dr Bannerman,’ he said to her quietly. ‘She’s in a dreadful state.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Mr Payton. I’m so sorry. Er – Mr Windsor – that is, I mean, the – the body . . .’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘I think he’s still Mr Windsor for now,’ said Joe gently. ‘What about it?’

  ‘The doctor said there would have to be an inquest. He’s – been taken away to the hospital. I told Mrs – Lady – oh God. I told Chloe but I don’t think she took it in. And the police came, and they took the note. She was very upset about that.’

  ‘Do you . . .’ Joe hesitated. ‘Do you know what it said? The note? It’s all right, you can tell me. I’m family.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I did see it. I actually found it, when I opened the bedroom door. It was very – short. It just said, “I can’t take any more. I’m sorry.” And it said “I do love you.”’ Her voice shook again. ‘It’s so sad, Mr Payton. After a day like yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, it is dreadful,’ said Joe, ‘quite dreadful.’ Thinking, and trying to suppress the thought, that Piers had always had a wonderful sense of timing, that this whole thing was superb theatre. ‘Jean, why don’t you go and lie down for a while. You look terrible.’

  ‘No, it’s very kind of you, Mr Payton, but I’d really rather not. It helps to be doing things. I’ll carry on, there are so many calls to make, and I’ll get Dr Bannerman to come down if I can.’

  ‘Fine. Anything urgent, Jean, you can ask me. Where are the children?’

  ‘In the nursery with Rosemary. And Lady Hunterton.’

  ‘How’s Pandora?’

  ‘She’s fairly calm. Shocked, I suppose. Poor little girl. She loved her father so much. More than anything in the world, he was the person she most cared about, she worshipped him.’

  Jesus Christ, thought Joe, where have I heard all this before, and he thought of Fleur, who had undoubtedly helped to bring all this about, and he thought that if he could have got hold of her at the moment, he would easily have killed her.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Fleur. ‘Sweet Jesus, Reuben, what have I done?’

  ‘You haven’t done anything,’ said Reuben. ‘He did it.’

  ‘Reuben, that’s not true. I have done something. First I seduced him, then I came here last night, tore into the family. Don’t tell me I haven’t done anything, Reuben, I’ve been the catalyst in this whole thing.’

  ‘Fleur, that is absolutely not true.’ Reuben was very distressed, his face pale and anguished, his large hands holding Fleur’s small ones. ‘Listen, the guy was not stable. He killed himself. He probably didn’t mean to die. It was probably a cry for help. It usually is.’

  ‘Don’t practise your fucking psychiatry on me, Reuben. I don’t need it right now.’

  ‘Maybe you do,’ said Reuben calmly.

  Fleur raised her hand and hit him. Then she burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Reuben, darling Reuben, I didn’t mean that, really I didn’t. I’m so glad you’re here. So terribly glad. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I may go for a walk for a little while.’

  She watched him loping down the drive, and thought she had never in her entire life felt so near to running away.

  Caroline came down the stairs; she looked exhausted.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fleur. ‘Sorry. I wish I wasn’t here, but I have to be, I
understand. Anyway, I want to see Chloe.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she does.’

  ‘Well then, leave her alone. For now.’

  ‘But Caroline, I want to say I’m sorry and –’

  ‘Fleur, in the first place saying you’re sorry really won’t help at all at the moment. Probably make things worse. In the second Chloe is in an appalling state, feels it’s all her fault and –’

  ‘Yes, well, so do I. I feel it’s all my fault. That’s why I have to see her. You don’t understand.’

  ‘Well of course, the simple fact is that it’s not your fault. Or Chloe’s,’ said Caroline. ‘Piers was not only an unbalanced personality, he was under appalling strain for a great many reasons, and he killed himself. He’s tried to do it before and –’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Yes, he has. Twice.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Fleur. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I don’t think you knew much about him at all, Fleur, actually. And I don’t think it’s relevant.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Of course it is. He was a neurotic personality. Which is what Reuben was saying. I should have been more – careful.’ Her eyes were blue, very wide, very frightened-looking. ‘Shit, Caroline, what have I done?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Caroline. She reached out for Fleur, took her hand, led her into the morning room. ‘Listen, Fleur. Now I am not a psychiatrist, and know a great deal less about it, I am sure, than your rather odd friend Mr Blake.’

  ‘He’s not odd,’ said Fleur.

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t criticize your friends. Is that what he is? A friend?’

  ‘Yes. A friend. A good friend.’

  ‘Well, anyway. I know nothing at all about psychiatry. I would go so far as to say I’m deeply suspicious of it. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie, getting on with things, all that sort of thing. But maybe I’m not the person to pontificate on such matters. I made a fair old hash of motherhood.’

  Fleur said nothing. Caroline looked at her steadily.

  ‘But, Fleur, you are not responsible for Piers’s death. Absolutely not. Any more than Chloe is, and she is saying much the same as you, at this moment. Of course you shouldn’t have had an affair with him, it was an appalling thing to do, whatever your motives. And it was not very wise of you to come here last night. Or to tell Chloe you’d been in cahoots with Magnus. Which, I have to say, makes me personally feel – well, a little odd. To say the least.’