They sat by the window ledge and smoked, and Tom pointed out his near neighbours, the pair of bickering pigeons. Edie gave a half-laugh.
‘Something else Peter joked about in his letter. Now that he’s a jailbird he says he’s willing to release me from our ten-year engagement. I wrote back and said Not on your life!’
Tom smiled. ‘You’ll have found someone before then, I’m sure of it. Some feller will sweep you off your feet.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and a shadow of pain darkened her face. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Nina. The police reckon there was a man in the background that none of her friends knew about – he may have been the one who did her in. An absolute sweetheart, she was. You met her, didn’t you?’
Tom nodded. He could hardly comprehend the horror of it himself, and he hadn’t even known her. It was only a matter of days since he had driven Nina home from L’Etoile and they had talked about Madeleine. For some reason he kept thinking about the cigarette she had casually lit for him as she sat there, passing it from her mouth to his. It was the odd intimacy of it that stuck, those lips with the breath of life on them – now emptied of it, forever.
‘. . . hard to take in, isn’t it?’ Edie was saying. ‘I mean, it’s frightening the way it arrived out of nowhere. One minute this woman you’ve known for years is there, the next –’
Tom was still thinking of what they’d discussed in the car that day. Nina had expressed some anxiety about her next job, and whether there might even be a next job. And now, all the striving, the worrying, gone off in smoke. For all he knew they might have become friends. It was too sad for words.
They had another delinquent cigarette while they did The Times crossword together, before Edie had to go. She asked him if there was anything he needed.
‘Just your constant and unwavering devotion,’ said Tom. ‘Oh, and some writing paper. I suppose Peter’s address is –’
‘HMP Pentonville. That should get to him.’
‘One other thing, Edie. I really don’t want Jimmy showing up here.’
Edie nodded. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll make sure. But after what’s happened I don’t think he would dare.’
Stephen was waiting in the foyer of Marlborough Studios, off York Road, when Ludo Talman came out to greet him. Ludo hadn’t been at the funeral, but he had sent his bereaved friend a letter of condolence, the single one Stephen had received, for almost nobody knew how things stood between himself and Nina. And now they never would. In the letter Ludo had asked him to call at the studio so he could give him lunch.
‘There’s something I have to show to you first,’ said Ludo, conducting him along a corridor and into a private screening room. ‘Do sit down.’
Stephen sank into one of the plush cherry-red seats, wondering what to expect. One of Ludo’s army of assistants brought in a pot of coffee and asked him if he required a projectionist. He shook his head and the young woman withdrew, leaving them alone. He went to the projection desk and picked up a round metal tin, which he held up for Stephen to see.
‘This is a very short film one of our chaps made of Nina. It’s not her screen test – that’s in the vault – just a reel the cameraman shot to check the light.’ He opened the tin to show him. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘Yes. I think I would.’ But he felt alarmed at the sudden prospect of Nina’s face before him; film was a way the dead returned to us. Ludo had flicked off the lights. From behind came a click, and then the purring sprockety whirr of the reel going round. The white projection screen suddenly bloomed into life, a little stutter of numbers, abstracted shapes – and straight into a close-up of Nina, serious at first, even nervous, he could tell from the quick blinking of her eyes. A cut to another close-up, a slightly different angle, and now she was more at ease, laughing at something just off-camera. There was no sound, of course, but she was talking, animatedly, and he could read her lips repeating a phrase – ‘The same thing nearly happened to me!’ A smile, and a vigorous nod. Another cut to her, now in mid-shot, striking a few silly poses and again convulsing in laughter. (Stephen felt an ache start up behind his throat – he would never hear that laugh again.) There was a pause; in the next shot her hair was up in a chignon, a “stage” look, more austere than with it down. She was staring directly at the camera now, face-on, a little smile at some remark off-screen. Then, with decision, her face leaned right into the lens and she blew a kiss.
Another stutter, a white-out, and the whirring stopped. The film had lasted barely three minutes.
Ludo paused for a few moments before he walked round to turn the lights back on. His face was tense with uncertainty as he lowered himself into the seat next to Stephen.
‘Are you all right?’
Stephen nodded, sombre, but dry-eyed. ‘She looks so beautiful,’ he said wonderingly. ‘How could someone –?’ He found himself shrinking away from the question. He wanted to think she hadn’t suffered, that death had come abruptly, without her knowing. The alternative was more than he could bear to contemplate. Ludo had placed the tin on the armrest between them.
‘I wonder if you’d like to have it,’ he said. ‘It’s not much, but . . .’
Stephen stared at it for a moment, his hand caressing its curved metal edge. He smiled sadly, and murmured his thanks.
As they returned down the corridor, he decided to mention something that had nagged away from the police report. ‘You heard about the message she was supposed to have picked up at the theatre, on the evening she was murdered? The stage manager of the Strand said it came from this studio.’
‘Hmm, I did, and it’s pretty mysterious – because nobody here has any knowledge of it.’
Stephen frowned. ‘There wasn’t some arrangement to get her back for another look?’
Ludo shook his head. ‘Not so far as I know. The letter of rejection had gone out to her agent – I dictated it myself.’ He gave a rueful grimace. ‘She was last seen making a phone call from the theatre, at about 6 p.m. But nobody here received a call from her. We checked.’
‘Don’t you have some rehearsal rooms up in Hampstead?’
‘We did. But the place hasn’t been used in ages – we moved all of them here instead.’
Stephen halted, considering. ‘So, apart from you, who would have seen the test she did for – what was the film?’
‘Fortune’s Cap. Half a dozen of the staff, maybe a couple of producers. The police have interviewed us all, probably thinking along the same lines as you. A studio employee “crazed with desire” lures Nina out on the pretext of a film deal. They meet, she sees through the ruse, there’s a violent struggle . . .’ Ludo raised his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug of incredulity.
‘What about the cameraman?’ said Stephen, weighing the tin of film in his hand. ‘I noticed she was – kind of flirting with him.’
Ludo shook his head again. ‘Not a chance. That cameraman – Sidney – is about seventy years old. And half deaf. She was being nice to him.’
‘Ah.’
Perhaps it was Stephen’s defeated look that touched his friend, for when he next spoke something in his voice had changed. ‘It must be awful, this waiting and wondering. I wish I could do something about it. But that phone message didn’t come from here, Stephen.’
On returning home he could see the children through the living-room window helping Cora decorate the Christmas tree. He had collected them at Paddington the previous evening. He had not seen Freya so cock-a-hoop in months, and suspected the cause to be more than a holiday from school. On hearing him at the front door Cora had come out into the hall. There was something odd in her expression.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘I’ve just heard the most shocking news, and I wondered – I was having lunch with Joan Dallington today. She told me that Nina Land – the actress – was found dead last week.’ She lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Murdered.’
Stephen’s gaze dropped. ‘I
know,’ he said. ‘And it was two weeks ago.’
Cora flinched. ‘Why ever didn’t you tell me? I’ve been worrying over it all day, thinking you mightn’t know.’
‘I’m sorry. Ludo told me – I’ve just seen him.’ He was aware of eliding two events to make them seem consecutive.
‘Do the police have any clue about –?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, it’s too awful! You met her once, didn’t you?’
Stephen sensed a movement at the door of the living room, out of Cora’s line of vision. Freya stood there, silent as a statue in a niche, her dark eyes trained on him. He knew then that his next words would tell her for certain what sort of father she had.
‘Yes, we were introduced. She seemed very nice, for the brief time we spoke.’
Cora hurried on with her own aria of lament for the poor woman, so young and so talented, who could have imagined such a ghastly end to a life? Stephen heard himself mutter in agreement. When his gaze slid back to the threshold of the living room his daughter had gone.
Later that evening he sat on the couch in his study, dark but for a glimmering desk lamp. He had avoided dinner, claiming a headache, and overheard Cora telling the children not to disturb him. The fire had died in the grate, and he hadn’t moved to rekindle it. He kept opening the tin and pulling out the black-and-white coil of film to examine her ghostly negative. He felt at once shocked and composed in his contemplation of her, the face ambered in translucent windows of light. There had come a reckoning he had been trying to elude these past days, and he could feel his resistance to it wane – it had been prodding at vulnerable points, finally overpowering him. It was simply this: if he had left her alone, she would still be alive.
Behind him he heard the door creak open, and a light footfall across the wooden floor. Freya sat down next to him, and waited.
Eventually, he said, ‘I hope you have some good news, at least.’
She nodded. ‘Mum says I can leave Tipton at Easter. She’s going to find a school near us. St Paul’s, maybe.’
‘But Rowan’s going to stay?’
‘If he wants. He seems to like it there now.’
‘Well, I’m very pleased.’
There was a pause. ‘Thanks for persuading her.’
‘How d’you know I did?’
Freya gave a little half-snort of dismissal: she just knew. ‘What’s that?’ she said, looking at the metal tin on his lap.
‘Something Ludo Talman gave me. A memento.’
His eyes were cast down, but he sensed Freya staring at him. Perhaps it was that word, the finality of it, that got to him. Memento, without its ghost companion, mori. Unseemly to give way in front of a child, even one as precocious as Freya, but it seemed quite beyond help. His shoulders were perfectly still; it was just the brimming at his eyes he had trouble with. As often as he brushed the tears away a fresh flow coursed down his cheeks. He didn’t speak; he wasn’t sure he could speak, so choked was his throat.
Only when Freya took his hand in hers did he feel a relief from the pressure within. For some minutes they sat there, without a word to each other. But he kept hold of her hand as though it were the one thing in the world that might save him from drowning.
20
WHEN SOBER, JIMMY consulted his conscience in the same way he might read a book on a subject that half appalled and half fascinated him. He would acquaint himself with the main argument, and then skim rapidly through pages at a time, quietly relegating information to footnotes and parentheses whenever the detail became too pertinent or accusing. He thought it foolish to enquire very deeply into matters past remedy. Concerning his recent behaviour he was aware of ‘mistakes having been made’, a phrase defanged of any serious power to discomfit. But he did not remain untroubled. At vulnerable moments he felt conscience’s nipping bite as he recalled Tom’s prone form jerking on the carpet like a fish gasping for breath. Oh God, how could he have –?
Best not to think of it. Not his fault. Apparently he was persona non grata at the hospital where Tom was recovering. Edie had warned him off – the patient isn’t ready to see you, she’d said. Not that he wanted to go anyway. He regarded hospitals as the waiting rooms of death. As to visiting Peter in prison, well, there wasn’t a team of wild horses alive that would have dragged him up to Pentonville. During his frantic escape from the drag ball, with the police whistles keening in the night air and his lungs burning with exhaustion, a phrase he had read in newspapers tolled through his wearied brain: The defendant was taken down and removed to prison. No fate short of death was more terrifying to him, and the idea of setting foot in such a place, even as a visitor, was unthinkable.
He had been as close to despair that night as he had ever come. Having fled through at least three back gardens and scrambled over a wooden fence, he found himself on a lonely street where moonlight made horrific gnarled silhouettes of the trees. Deprived of his coat and his cane in the alarum back at the house, he was shivering with the cold and limping from the pain of his scraped knees. He looked one way along the street, then the other. Where in God’s name was he? He had no money for a taxi, and in any case he couldn’t see or even hear a car in the vicinity. He had nothing but the clothes he stood up in – a hired Edwardian evening gown, a string of pearls, white kid gloves and dress boots. ‘Incriminating’ hardly covered it. He started walking downhill – surely that was south – keeping to the shadows for fear of the police widening their net.
He turned onto another sloping street, ears pricked for the approach of a car. Halfway down he saw two ladies emerging from a side road, and he hurried to catch them up. Perhaps they would take pity on him. He took great wheezing gulps of breath as he ran, his asthma tightening in his chest.
‘I say – would you – please help,’ he gasped.
They turned at his voice, and he saw straight away that these ladies were in fact young gentlemen, sporting gowns beneath their overcoats. It seemed they too were fugitives from the ball, though in no apparent fright from the untimely end to the evening. They might almost have been taking a midnight stroll. One of them raised his hat in greeting as Jimmy drew near.
‘Hullo, are you – oh!’ The exclamation was prompted by Jimmy’s collapse to his knees, in fatigue and supplication. He heard the other one say, ‘Golly, looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
They helped him up with much clucking encouragement and propped him against a tree. His breathing was stertorous, though neither of his helpers seemed particularly alarmed. They introduced themselves as Jeremy and Vivian. After some moments Jimmy managed to gasp out his name in return. They plainly had no idea who he was, and for once in his life he didn’t care. He explained, haltingly, that he had a car parked up by the house, but that his driver was indisposed.
‘I don’t think we can go back there, James,’ said Vivian with a little grimace. ‘The place will be crawling with Brendas.’
‘And we’ve been nabbed at one of these before,’ said Jeremy. ‘Did you know they rub your cheeks with blotting paper to see if you’re wearing slap?’
It was proposed that they resume their journey on foot, and when Jimmy groaned his new companions became solicitous. ‘Don’t fret, James, we’ll get you home. Now, d’you like chicken?’
Jimmy frowned, mystified. ‘Yes, of course –’
‘Well,’ said Jeremy, crooking his elbow in invitation, ‘grab a wing, dear.’ And they marched Jimmy, arms linked on either side, down Highgate Hill, beguiling the journey with selections from Purcell and Ireland. (As Vivian explained, they had been choral scholars together.) At Archway they found a cabman’s shelter, and twenty minutes later a taxi rumbled, mercifully, into view. As they were borne through the small hours towards Holborn his companions talked with the driver about the fire down at Crystal Palace, but Jimmy merely listened in a fugue of exhausted shame.
Presently he saw from the window the reassuring outline of the British M
useum, and then the cab had come to a halt outside Princess Louise Mansions. The boys helped him out onto the pavement, and he felt moved to make a short speech.
‘Gentlemen. I cannot properly thank you for your kindness at this moment, but be assured that I will.’ He faltered for a moment. He was still just drunk enough to force himself. ‘I must – I am obliged to tell you that this evening I have been drunken, treacherous, cowardly, unfeeling, dishonest – and lewd.’ At which his head drooped in abjection.
He sensed a moment’s embarrassed silence before Jeremy, or perhaps Vivian, said quietly, ‘Well, we all of us have our faults, Miss Prism – why don’t you take yourself off to bed? Things will look much brighter in the morning.’
The boy was right about that. By lunchtime Jimmy had quite forgotten his doorstep confession of the night before, but he had retained, scribbled on a dress-hire ticket, the telephone numbers of his two new friends. Capital!
Having loitered among the strollers and window gazers on the Strand – his version of Christmas shopping – Stephen was still a little early for his meeting with Everett Druce on Craven Street. The house was a double-fronted Georgian terrace halfway down towards the Embankment. The brass knocker felt as solid in his hand as the clapper of a church bell. A maid answered the door and ushered him up the stairs into a drawing room of sepulchral quiet. On the walls paintings were hung and lit with a professional expertise. He could smell fresh beeswax coming off the parquet floor. Ludo had told him that Druce collected, and he was right – these were lovely pictures. He went over to examine the one which held pride of place on the far wall. It was a large oil on the classical myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, and if he wasn’t much mistaken it was a work of –
‘Mr Wyley.’ Druce’s velvety voice somehow matched the shawl-collared smoking jacket he wore. He approached Stephen with loping strides to offer his hand. ‘I see you were admiring . . .’
‘It’s Poussin, yes?’
Curtain Call Page 33
