Fast and Louche

by Jeremy Scott

  ‘What news of Alex Howard?’ I asked.

  ‘In fine form. Joyce and I saw him recently in Hong Kong, he lent us a Rolls that broke down.’

  ‘What’s he doing there?’ I asked.

  Nigel shrugged, ‘Who can tell? You know how mysterious he is about his life.’

  The meal had ended some while before. Magda, Joyce and the Broackes’ house guests had gone to take their siestas around the pool, but Nigel and I lingered at the table talking. Still impressively handsome, he’d put on size and weight, he moved with slow dignity. And he’d grown in gravitas. Mentally he was sharp as ever, but over the years he’d become less interested in listening.

  Taking a sip of brandy, he leaned back in his cushioned chair to remark, ‘Yes … if pressed, I must admit that on the whole it’s all turned out quite well.’ The gesture of his cigar embraced the bottle of Napoleon brandy on the table, and the view beyond over the sunlit garden and his life. ‘But …’ he added.

  But he’d worked for it, he went on to say, he’d worked for it very hard from a very early age. In fact, he’d never done anything except work. I knew it was true; unlike myself, he’d committed and buckled down from the start. As I listened to him talking about his life the sound of a loud splash and laughter reached us from the pool. For a moment I worried it was Joyce who had gone into the water, the weight of gold she was wearing would have dragged her to the bottom at once. But, unruffled by the danger, Nigel drew on his cigar and continued. He’d never had leisure, or a single life, or a private life; never had the freedom to be irresponsible or act on whim. He’d never had a youth. ‘I miss it,’ he said.

  ‘But why can’t you have one now?’ I asked. ‘You can afford it, you can buy yourself a belated randy adolescence.’

  He puffed on his cigar. Smoke poured from him, he looked as if he were on fire. ‘No I can’t,’ he explained. ‘If I go out at night without taking the Rolls I don’t just have to invent a convincing excuse for Joyce, but come up with a story for the chauffeur.’

  He’d built himself a golden cage.

  The Mayles’ house in St Jeannet finally became free and they moved there to set up home. The commune finished work on the apartment they’d been occupying … and the restoration of the mill was complete. For almost four years Magda and I had devoted our time, energy and money to making it perfect, united in a shared endeavour which had dominated our lives. Now it was done; we had no common interest or work to fill our day. But the weather stayed good even in winter, and I skied.

  ‘You haf more fun zan me,’ Magda said. ‘You ski, and you stay up late to read, you use more electricity.’

  In winter the sun disappeared behind the ridge soon after lunch, and in spring it rained a lot. No TV signal penetrated the gorge we lived in. We had time together … and time to reflect. Frank Lowe and the Broackes came only in summer; out of season, the Côte d’Azur is a retirement community. It was true we had Vincent and the commune for diversion but, ‘What’s the point of poor people? What are zey for?’ Magda asked me.

  I was stuck for a pithy answer. My attempt at an explanation clearly did not satisfy her, and I found myself brooding about her question afterwards.

  One afternoon we were on the terrace idly gazing upstream when she remarked, ‘Ven zee old sisters die vee can restore zee mill vere zey are living and sell it for real money.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen for a while,’ I told her.

  ‘It could,’ she insisted, and I laughed uneasily.

  ‘I could put a curse on them,’ she said. ‘I haf not told you, but I am a witch.’ I looked at her sharply and saw the expression on her face.

  She had always been less enamoured by the simple life than the Mayles or myself. She flew to Paris to stay with friends, and on her return mentioned she’d visited Notre Dame. I was surprised, for religious faith played no part in her life.

  ‘I lit a candle zere and prayed zee old sisters would die. I put a curse on zem,’ she said.

  A sense of dread came over me as I realised she was serious.

  On a drizzly winter evening I stood by the river in the dusk and stared at the water flowing by … and it didn’t look like Walden Pond any more. The forested walls of the ravine seemed to close in on me in the thickening gloom. In the dark mass of the mill only a single light was showing, ghostly in the mist. The room where Magda was waiting. The low rumble of the waterfall sounded in my ears like a reproach.

  I’d fallen in love with this place. I’d thought there was peace here, and fulfilment and a kind of wisdom, and for a time there had been; I’d believed it was Arcadia. But all the while we’d spent making it into that, I’d been building myself a jail. As effectively as Nigel, I’d constructed my own prison. And it wasn’t even solitary confinement. I had a cell-mate I’d come to realise I didn’t love and did not even especially like.

  24

  46 Lower Belgrave Street

  The two tomatoes were each as big as a fist. Cutting them into thick segments, I fried them in olive oil and garlic on the Calor stove. As there was only one pan, I had to remove them to make fried bread and at the precise moment it started to go brown I added a light coating of soft cheese … Transferring the meal to a plate, I set it on the folding table on the tiny terrace together with a single orange for dessert; dinner was served.

  Usually I ate fish, but a money transfer I was expecting hadn’t come through. The situation was as familiar as the range of economy menus which went with. Dinner tonight was an especial favourite, well matched by a sturdy red at 400 pesetas a 5-litre jerrycan.

  I’d landed here in Ibiza after a winter on the road passed in guest bedrooms and bad hotels. A trail of dirty laundry abandoned in left-luggage lockers through northern Europe lay behind me. I was back to what I could carry in a leather grip. Provence, the mill, Magda were no more a part of my life and, tonight as every night, I dined alone. I had fled from France.

  I believe Magda had an image of her ideal mate which in New York I’d appeared to fit. But I was no longer that man, if ever I had been, nor was she the woman I’d blindly fallen for there. At the mill we’d got to know each other, and that had proved fatal. It was clear to both of us we could not remain together.

  The studio apartment I was renting in Ibiza – one of six in a shabby, breeze-block cube – was modern and tacky. Its terrace was cramped, but the view magnificent. The pine forest ended only forty yards away in a cliff that dropped straight into the sea. There was no beach and no one ever came this way to disturb the tranquillity of the scene.

  Each day followed the same pattern. I got up, threw back the shutters to reveal the view, made coffee and worked through the morning on the terrace. The only sound was the whirr of insects in the forest as the pines warmed in the sun and the scent of resin grew overpowering. In the afternoon I swam, lay on a rock and read. After a solitary dinner I worked until late. It was an ordered routine and a peaceful life; I was happy.

  Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse … it was too good to last. On the first of August I woke to the sound of voices, flung open the shutters … and stumbled back in disbelief. The tranquil view had changed, changed utterly. In place of trees and gleam of sea stood a tented encampment. And the area swarmed with people, young people in shorts busy erecting tents, and all talking at the top of their voices in the way only the Spanish know how. They were Boy Scouts, and there were hundreds of them.

  They were close, their tent lines began only paces away, but minutes later I observed them in even greater detail. The scout leader’s decision to site their wash house two metres from my bathroom window had been dictated by the block’s plumbing. The spine of the rectangular shower tent, whose sides stood open, had been equipped with waterpipes and a double row of showerheads. The wrap-around view revealed to me was of pubescent boys dancing naked on the duckboards, squealing beneath the jets.

  Had I been a true, red-blooded pederast, like so many Englishmen I knew, the prospect would have been unimaginable
nubile heaven. And even I … No, no, I told myself firmly, this is no time for such a whim plus a three-stretch in a Spanish jail! Besides, I was here to work. I was writing a book. It was about Lord Lucan.

  It’s said that a writer does not choose a story, the story chooses him. Four years before in Vence I’d bought a day-old English paper to read on a café terrace. The photograph of ‘Lucky’ Lucan on the front page was instantly familiar. That haughty tilt to the head, lidded eyes and faint sardonic smile were unmistakable. Often in casinos I’d found myself watching him among his friends, listening to the patrician drawl and manner that said the world was his.

  The paper stated that his children’s nanny had been murdered, and his wife Veronica savagely assaulted. Lucan’s borrowed Ford Corsair had been found abandoned at Newhaven. His whereabouts were unknown; the noble lord had done a runner and disappeared. He was either dead, or somewhere busy reinventing himself …

  It was now 1978 and Lucan’s hiding-place was still undiscovered, though a warrant existed for his arrest on a charge of murder. From the start I’d been unusually fascinated by the events of that November night, and I became obsessed, as have so many who have probed the same mystery.

  Lucan was a member of a circle of men who were very close. Some I knew directly or indirectly. Dominic Elwes had married Ben Fisher’s cousin; Charles Benson’s wife was a friend of Tania’s; Tania had dated Jimmy Goldsmith. All I knew by sight. Most of them were old Etonians, most had served in the Guards or a Cavalry regiment, few had been to university. They formed a tight coterie my own age, a small tribe who shared the same upbringing, education, politics, dress, attitude and tastes. Lucan himself was the archetype of the men I’d known and detested in the regiment.

  Only once had I seen his wife, Veronica. A small, shy, insecure woman, for her Lucan had been a ‘catch’. They had nothing in common except their snobbery; both were prisoners of class. As the marriage deteriorated she’d taken to following him to the Clermont club to watch him gamble. He couldn’t stand her near him by then and the evening I saw her she sat alone, outside the circle. Even the women did not trouble to hide their scorn. Her vigil must have been unendurable – yet night after night she put herself in for it. I felt pity for her, at the same time repelled by that bubble of scary alienation that surrounds the mad.

  Lucan continued to lose remorselessly over ten years. By the date of his disappearance he was reduced to working as a ‘house player’ at the casino, he was good furniture. By then his inheritance of £250,000 was long gone; his overdrafts and debts amounted to £20,000, plus legal fees estimated at £40,000.

  A year before the murder, Lucan had left the family house to rent a flat. Convinced Veronica was mentally unstable and incapable of looking after their three children, he snatched them from their nanny in Green Park, and kept them with him in his cramped basement apartment until the custody case came to court. Losing it, he was saddled with enormous costs. His bitterness was incalculable. He genuinely loved his children, his feelings for them, and most particularly for his son and heir, were passionate. ‘More like an obsession’, his mother described them. He’d exhausted all legal recourse – by now the only way to rescue them was for Veronica to die.

  I do not believe he planned to kill her himself, I think he hired an accomplice to do so. The evening of 7 November he drove by the Clermont in his Mercedes, speaking to the doorman to give himself an alibi, then quickly back to his own flat where he switched to the Ford Corsair he’d borrowed from his friend Michael Stoop. Then he drove to Lower Belgrave Street to fulfil his intention.

  What happened in the unlit basement of that dismal little house is unclear, but something went horribly wrong. ‘A terrible catastrophe … blood … mess,’ Lucan described it to his mother on the telephone an hour later. The wrong woman had been killed, his accomplice fled, and Veronica, hysterical and bleeding, run off down the street. He had only moments to escape before she raised the alarm.

  It was 9.45 on a wet winter’s night in central London. He was in the most appalling trouble. He had blood on his trousers, very little money and no plan. But he had friends …

  E. M. Forster famously said, ‘If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.’

  To violate the laws of England was entirely alien to the group surrounding Lucan. The idea of ‘country’ was very important to them. They were England, an integral part of its establishment. But in the mid-seventies, the times were gravely out of joint in Britain … economic recession, strikes, social unrest, kidnapping, bombs. The Left had come to power and the rich were running scared. Colonel David Stirling, who had commanded the SAS, was putting together a private army to combat trade union militancy and ‘keep the country going’. Michael Stoop, among others, had volunteered to join, and there was wild talk of mounting a military coup.

  They, this group of men and women who’d been accustomed to privilege and deference all their lives, believed the country wasn’t theirs any more. One of their last strongholds had been breached when the Clermont was bought by the downmarket Playboy Club. The barbarian horde of admen, media people, lesser show-biz, real estate agents, hairdressers and Arabs had swarmed in; the wrong sort of people had taken over. Lucan and his set loathed these uppity arrivistes who didn’t know their place. They hated what was happening. They felt themselves embattled, an endangered species, and it drew them close.

  So, when Lucan went to them that night for help in his desperate need, how had they acted, I wondered. While researching the book I spoke to a number of people, among them David Gerring, one of the two police officers who’d run the investigation. Now retired, he was landlord of a country pub near Gatwick, where he could relax in his twin pleasures of drinking and talking.

  ‘It was a world none of us had met before,’ he said, speaking of the enquiry. ‘I mean, it was like you had to go cap in hand. There was this snooty old dowager who wouldn’t talk to us and I said, ‘Madam, this is a criminal investigation, the nanny’s been murdered.’ ‘Such a pity,’ she said, ‘So hard to find staff these days.’’

  Gerring was convinced Lucan had been hidden, then smuggled to France in a private plane. Equipped with funds and a new passport, from there he’d escaped to East Africa. Gerring had traced and spoken on the telephone to a German doctor who’d been trapped with Lucan by a coup d’état in Madagascar. A revolution was going on, the island was in chaos; Gerring was refused the funds to fly there and follow up the contact.

  ‘So what’s this book you’re doing, exactly?’ he asked me late in our first conversation.

  ‘The story after the murder,’ I told him. ‘Where he was hidden, and how his friends rallied round to get him out the country.’

  Gerring’s face changed expression. ‘That wouldn’t be clever,’ he said.

  ‘It would be interesting,’ I maintained.

  He gave an emphatic shake of the head, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ he insisted. And then he did something extraordinary. The saloon bar where we sat was large and only four other people were in it, at the far end of the room. Yet Gerring glanced left and right to check we were unheard, then leaned towards me, lowering his voice to say, ‘You can’t upset the Golden Man.’

  He’d been so jovial till then, so bluff and down-to-earth, this shadow of paranoia was absurd yet oddly chilling. Gerring was so in awe of James Goldsmith he would not speak his name for fear of invoking him. He was afraid of Goldsmith, I realised.

  And perhaps with reason. On the day after the murder a group of Lucan’s friends was hurriedly summoned by John Aspinall to lunch at the Clermont. The company included Bill Shand-Kydd (once headboy at Stowe), Daniel Meinertzhagen, Dominic Elwes, Charles Benson and Stephen Raphael. That council-of-war was reported by Private Eye, who stated that James Goldsmith had attended the meeting – and in this they were wrong, for he’d been in Paris that day. Goldsmith’s response was to issue sixty-three writs against the agents dist
ributing the magazine, including one he owned himself. He then sued Richard Ingrams, its editor, and Patrick Marnham, who’d written the piece, for criminal libel. ‘I’ll throw them in prison. I’ll hound their wives, even in their widows’ weeds,’ he bragged.

  The legal battle went on for seventeen months. In all, Goldsmith brought a total of nine separate actions and issued over one hundred writs, including an injunction to restrain five journalists (Auberon Waugh, Nigel Dempster, Patrick Marnham, Michael Gillard, Richard West) from writing anything about him in any publication anywhere. Private Eye was forced to settle out of court for £45,000 damages plus Goldsmith’s costs; the magazine barely survived.

  Goldsmith was a man implacable in his wars – and dangerous. Gerring’s vehemence on this subject was compelling and ultimately persuasive. If I was going to write about Lucan’s disappearance and the Clermont set, it would be wise to do so in the guise of fiction, a roman a clef, I decided.

  My novel, Hunted, was published in the UK by W. H. Allen. Before it came out I left the apartment in Ibiza and moved to London to be present at its birth. Because of the years I’d spent in advertising I reckoned I knew something about marketing and promotion, and over lunch with Aubrey Davies, Allen’s commissioning editor, asked what plans there were for publicity. His response was evasive, Allen’s were in dire financial trouble. There was no money available for publicity or promotion.

  ‘None?’ I asked, astonished.

  Well … he thought he could get authorisation of a sum up to £25. The news was discouraging.

  Just before the book came out Private Eye ran a piece saying that ‘after representation by person or persons unknown’ the publishers had taken the highly unusual step of putting a red wrapper round the book stating that the events described were purely fictitious and not based on anyone, either alive or dead. The next issue of the magazine, only a few days after Hunted’s release, stated that all copies of the book had been removed from Allen’s stockroom, all remaining warehouse copies ordered in a single order for despatch, and sales reps instructed not to continue to offer the title. ‘It would seem that Allen’s management has only just discovered what the book is about and has ordered these last-ditch efforts to stop the tome’s publication.’