Sylvia had known Francis Richmond for thirty years. He’d been a frequent weekend guest after Maurice, her husband, had died fifteen years ago. Maurice had not liked Francis. A pansy, Maurice had called him and so, while Maurice was alive, Francis had rarely come to dine and never to stay. But after Maurice’s death he had, often, for Sylvia liked his company. He made her laugh with his tales and the gossip of which he was such an unfailing source. She thought him deliciously clever, so amusing, so well-read. She enjoyed, or rather she leafed through, his book on porcelain and at her dinner parties or at weekends she had him hold court at her table, talking about literature, the theatre, art – and, of course, people. Always people. But Francis Richmond was for Sylvia Benedict more than just a social entertainer. She relied on him to advise her what books to read or at least what books to talk about; what exhibitions to visit and even what clothes to wear – at least what colour clothes. She confided in him about her family and her son, the present earl who lived in Perth with his boring wife and children. She would discuss with him her own life, tell him about her followers, for even in her late forties there were many followers – although she claimed they were really ‘walkers’ who were only after a free dinner or an invitation to Wainscott. She had liked and trusted Francis and she had mourned him sincerely when he died.
It was, therefore, with agreeable anticipation that on this Sunday morning Sylvia Benedict opened the Review section of the Sunday News to read the serialisation of the diary of her old friend.
Fifteen miles to the south on the coast, at Emerald Cunliffe’s country house, The Waves, a similar scene was being enacted. The breakfast tray was balanced on Emerald’s knees as she sat up in bed to enjoy those agreeable hours on Sunday morning when in the peace and quiet of her bedroom she browsed through the Sunday papers. It would be noon before she would emerge, by then well acquainted with the political news and the reviews of the new books and plays, and descend, in what she described as her warpaint, to join her weekend guests for cocktails before Sunday luncheon. At the weekend parties at The Waves there were invariably some old friends, at least one ambassador, probably a junior minister or Opposition spokesman and one of her ‘discoveries’ or protégés, perhaps a painter enjoying a first exhibition or a young poet searching for a publisher for his inexplicable verse. The house party usually consisted of eight or nine people. They were expected to arrive before luncheon on Saturday and leave on the Sunday afternoon.
When Emerald, too, saw on the front page of the Sunday News that the Review section carried an extract from the diary of Francis Richmond she, like Sylvia, was surprised to learn that he had kept a diary and turned to it with perhaps even greater anticipation than had Sylvia at Wainscott.
For Francis had been one of her earliest friends. She had known him since she was a schoolgirl when he had been brought to stay by her older brother, Bolton, when he was up at King’s, Cambridge and had met Francis Richmond at a party at his tutor’s. Ever since that first visit, Francis had become almost a member of the family; and for Emerald a confidant, a second, although much older brother. Very soon – for her mother claimed Emerald had been born an adult – she realised the kind of man he was; that he was in love with Bolton. After her first Season, she began to appreciate what an advantage it was to have a man friend like Francis, so much older and so worldly wise. Such men, she realised were much more companionable: they posed no threat, no menace; there was none of the tension, as with her other men friends. When her love life went off the rails, as it so frequently did, Francis provided her with a shoulder to cry upon. When it was going well, as it sometimes did, she and he would giggle together. She confided in him all her secrets, confident that they were safe with him.
The reaction of the two friends who were simultaneously reading the extracts of the diary in the Sunday News was strikingly similar. The breakfast tray, which lay across the lap of each, was flung aside, the coffee and juice flowing over it, and anyone passing in the corridor outside their rooms in their respective houses must have heard their squeals of rage and betrayal. After the first surge of fury their immediate thought was to speak to the other and both reached for the telephone.
Emerald got through first. ‘You’ve read it?’ she began.
‘I certainly have. How could he have written about us like that! I thought of him as my oldest friend. I trusted him. I told him everything and all the time he was writing down what I said and—’
‘And sneering and laughing at us.’
‘And now it’s all over the newspaper! How could it have got into the newspaper?’
‘Someone must have sold it to them.’
‘Then it would have been that nasty little actor who made such a fool of him at the end of his life. And to think I introduced them! They were here for a weekend. It started then. I was told Francis had left the creature absolutely everything.’
‘I have a full house, including the Italians. It would be the Italians! They’ll be reading it now.’
‘Surely it’s libellous? Can’t we have it stopped?’
‘What good is that? Everyone’s already reading it.’
‘We must force them to retract and publish an apology.’ Sylvia paused. Then she said excitedly, ‘There’s one person who might be able to help. Mordecai Ledbury. He’ll know what to do.’
She put down the receiver and dialled London.
When the telephone rang in his apartment in Albany, Mordecai was in his dressing gown, a great oriental confection of red and gold, with a dragon down the back.
‘It’s Sylvia,’ said the voice. ‘Have you read the Sunday News?’
Mordecai had been expecting someone would call. ‘I have,’ he answered.
‘Then you’ve read Francis’s diary. How could he have done such a wicked thing, betraying his closest friends, writing down all we said to him? I’ve just spoken to Emerald. She’s shattered. I thought you’d be able to help us. What can we do? What do you advise us to do?’
‘I won’t advise you,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, you won’t? Why can’t you advise us?’
‘I can but I won’t. All I can suggest is that you consult your solicitor.’
‘You mean Oliver Goodbody?’
‘No, not him. Some other solicitor. Oliver Goodbody won’t be able to help you either.’
‘I don’t understand. Why can’t you? Why can’t Oliver?’
‘Because News Universal has retained Oliver and myself. You must get advice from someone else. There’s nothing either of us can do to help you.’
For a time she was silent. Then she hissed into the telephone, ‘You bastard! You’re on their side!’ She raised her voice. ‘I suppose they’re paying you a fortune.’ And she banged down the receiver.
Neither Sylvia nor Emerald appeared for luncheon on that Sunday. The guests were informed they had headaches and were staying in bed. At The Waves the Italian Ambassador said very little over the sombre and silent meal, and he and his wife departed soon afterwards.
Chapter Two
At Chequers that same Sunday morning the Prime Minister was breakfasting alone in the dining room. A novel, The Card by Arnold Bennett, was propped against the marmalade jar when Alan Prentice, his Principal Private Secretary, came to him and said that Mr Digby Price, the Chairman of News Universal, was anxious to speak to him in person. The Prime Minister was acquainted with Mr Digby Price. As far as he could bring himself to, he went out of his way to be polite to the man whenever they met. He’d even once asked Price to Downing Street to attend some function concerning a charity that News Universal was promoting. The only reason why the Prime Minister felt obliged to tolerate Mr Digby Price was that editorially the papers published by News Universal, as opposed to the Telegram, were staunch supporters of his administration. With the exception of one minister: News Universal were regularly critical of the Minister for Defence Procurement. Alone of all the present ministers they criticised him regularly – but only him.
&nb
sp; The Prime Minister was not particularly distressed by this for in the rest of the media Richard Tancred was often, and as far as the Prime Minister was concerned, tiresomely, referred to as his obvious successor. Richard Tancred, these political commentators pointed out, came from a younger generation and, when the Prime Minister at last stood aside, as surely he soon must, Richard Tancred would infuse welcome new blood into a declining government, and would supply the energy and initiative that the present ageing Prime Minister now so singularly lacked. But while the Prime Minister did not object to this one minister being so often singled out for denigration in News Universal publications, which were in general so politically supportive of his administration, even this could not make him like their proprietor. ‘What does the fellow want?’ he asked with distaste.
‘He has something he wishes to say to you in person. He said it was a private matter.’
‘It must wait until I return to London.’
‘He said it was so urgent that he was prepared to come to Chequers today. I am to call him back when I’ve spoken with you.’
‘It must be important to make that scoundrel come all the way here on a Sunday.’
‘He said it would be no trouble; he’d come by helicopter.’ Alan handed the Prime Minister the Sunday News. Normally the Prime Minister made a show of never reading the newspapers, relying on the summary that was daily prepared for him. ‘I’ve had a look through the Sunday News,’ Alan went on. ‘I can only think that Mr Price might want to speak to you about the extracts they have published from the diary of Francis Richmond in their Review section.’
‘Who is Francis Richmond?’
‘A minor scholar, a collector of objets d’art, an expert in porcelain and china, apparently well-off and well connected. He mixed much in society in London, as well as across the Atlantic. That is, he mixed in what you, Prime Minister, might consider the more louche circles of society.’
‘Louche’ was a favourite adjective of the Prime Minister who applied it, as far as Alan could judge, to anyone who ever dined or lunched in a restaurant rather than in a club.
‘He published a small book on porcelain and wrote articles on Etruscan antiquities. He died last year.’ Alan pointed to the Review section, which the Prime Minister was holding away from him as though he feared that too close contact might contaminate him. ‘I think, sir, you should read the extracts from the diary. There are references to some of your colleagues. This may be what Mr Price wants to talk to you about. I can think of nothing else.’
With a sigh, the Prime Minister shut his well-thumbed copy of The Card, which he was rereading for the second time that year. ‘Do you mean that I have to read the diary of some … some dilettante, published in the scurrilous columns of the wretched newspaper owned by the villain who threatens to disturb my Sunday?’
‘Who also supports the policies of your administration, sir,’ said Alan. ‘So I think you should, yes.’
With Alan at his elbow, the Prime Minister began to read. After a few minutes he threw the newspaper aside. ‘What a lot of tosh! How could anyone be interested in such rubbish?’
‘The references to Mr McClaren and Baroness—’
The Prime Minister interrupted. ‘Oh, the references to Peregrine McClaren. Of course I’d heard that McClaren in his youth was rumoured to be a homosexual. With his looks that could scarcely be avoided and for all I know he was, and still is, a homosexual – or? What is the modern word for it?’
‘Gay, sir,’ Alan prompted.
‘Of course, gay.’ The Prime Minister looked sadly at the marmalade pot. ‘A misappropriation of such a useful word. However, I appointed McClaren knowing his reputation because he is a man of ability and was recommended by the Chief Whip – who is certainly not a man anyone could accuse of unusual or eccentric habits.’
He ran a delicate white hand over his fine head of silver hair. ‘In my youth, when gay meant laughter and happiness and jollity, and indeed even up to only a few years ago, such an appointment would have been unthinkable. But not now. Times, Alan, have changed Some might say they have changed for the worse. What in my youth was called a pansy and more lately a queer is no bar to public office. Indeed, I have found McClaren a most agreeable fellow, clubbable and good company, and as far as I know a loyal colleague. Above all, he’s an excellent minister. So I don’t see what the fuss is about.’
‘All I can say, sir, is that Mr Price wants to talk to you urgently and there is nothing else in his newspaper that would appear to concern the Administration except the references to the ministers. There are references to other ministers.’
The Prime Minister rose. ‘Very well. I’ll see him at three o’clock.’
The luncheon party that Sunday at Chequers consisted of the family, that is the Prime Minister and his wife, Joan, a redoubtable figure dressed like an Edwardian housekeeper in a long tweed skirt and flat, thick-soled shoes; their son, Gerard, a young man in his mid thirties whose business affairs in the East and, indeed, whose whole life caused his father personal as well as political embarrassment; and Joan’s brother, the Bishop of Peters-field, a jovial and outwardly not very spiritual cleric, accompanied by his faded wife. The other guests were the Solicitor-General – red-headed, bouncy, in his early forties, said to be a high flyer – and his exceedingly pretty blonde wife; the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, tall and grave, approaching the magic age of sixty when under the rules of the Civil Service he would be obliged to retire, and his already retiring wife. The party, seated at a round table, was completed by Alan Prentice. All were formally dressed, the women in dresses, the men in jackets and ties – all, that is, except for Gerard who wore an open shirt, a medallion round his neck in the fashion of thirty years ago and bright yellow trousers. Before lunch he had insisted on making margarita cocktails, which he had forced on his uncle the bishop and the young Solicitor-General. The Permanent Secretary and his wife had prudently accepted sherry.
At the meal the Prime Minister was in his usual benign mood, delighted to have beside him the pretty wife of the Solicitor-General. He began to tell her his experiences in World War Two, when as a child he had been evacuated with his mother from Singapore before it fell to the Japanese. The wife of the Solicitor-General listened dutifully.
Across the table the Prime Minister’s wife was complaining to her brother the bishop that Gerard had developed an ‘estuarial’ accent.
‘Certainly,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s not acceptable to talk posh any more.’ He turned to the Permanent Secretary’s wife. ‘Don’t you agree?’ She didn’t, but decided this was not the place and she not the one to start an argument, and kept silent.
The word ‘posh’ set off the Prime Minister. ‘Posh’, he announced, ‘came from the jargon of the Raj. Sailing east, the sahibs booked their cabins on the port side to mitigate the heat of the sun; and on the starboard side on the way home for a similar reason: port outward, starboard home. Posh.’
Joan began a serious discussion with the Permanent Secretary about the drug problem in prisons but the table was silenced when Gerard leaned across the table and said loudly, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, Uncle Harry, do you really believe in God?’
The Bishop, who he later confessed to his wife that he was feeling ‘slightly bouleversé’ from the effect of the margaritas his nephew had forced upon him and had not so far taken much part in the conversation, did not immediately respond.
‘I mean, a personal god,’ Gerard added. ‘Do you believe in that kind of god?’
His mother answered for her brother, ‘Don’t be absurd, Gerard. Of course he does. He wouldn’t be a bishop if he didn’t.’
‘The Bishop of Autun didn’t,’ said Gerald.
‘A Roman, of course, a Roman,’ muttered the Bishop.
The Prime Minister said, ‘When Charles Maurice de Périgord, former Bishop of Autun, came here as Ambassador in the eighteen twenties, he brought with him his niece as his hostess. She was also his mistr
ess. Think what the media would have made of that today,’
By now the question posed by Gerard was, to the Bishop’s relief, forgotten, and Gerard turned to the pretty wife of the Solicitor-General and winked. When she smiled he lightly placed his hand on her thigh where she let it rest, apparently quite unconcerned.
Alan Prentice said, ‘Prime Minister, you mustn’t forget that you’re seeing Mr Digby Price this afternoon.’
The Prime Minister put down his napkin and sighed. ‘I had forgotten. The fellow arrives at three o’clock.’ He looked at the clock over the chimneypiece. ‘In half an hour.’ He rose from the table. ‘I fear that his arrival will disturb your afternoon’s rest for he is coming in his personal flying machine – the badge of our plutocratic masters.’
Once the helicopter had landed in the park over the hedge that bordered it from the garden, Alan Prentice conducted Digby Price, who was accompanied by Wilson, to the house. In the hall, Alan invited Wilson to wait while he showed Price into the small white sitting room and then withdrew.
The Prime Minister greeted his guest affably, waving him to a chair, declaring that he thought that this agreeable room would be more comfortable than the long gallery in which to talk, attributing its grace to the renovations carried out by his predecessor Edward Heath many years earlier who, he said, had more taste and discrimination than any of his successors. He went on to speak of the generosity of Lord Lee who had given the house to the state for the use of the Prime Minister, using this preamble to take the opportunity of studying beneath his hooded eyes the figure and visage of his guest, both of which he found singularly distasteful.
The Richmond Diary Page 6
