‘No. Not since he left.’
‘He’s been trying to get hold of you.’
‘Well, he shouldn’t have moved to LA.’
‘He’s all alone, Cordy.’
‘I know . . .’ Something caught in her throat; she clutched at it, rubbing her neck. ‘I know that, Daddy.’
He was enjoying this almost, having her wriggle a little. Finally. ‘He needs you. You’re the stronger one than him. I thought you might have offered to go and see him, stay with him for a bit – your mother’s gone out for a month, but she can’t live there, can she?’
‘I can’t see them,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me to.’
‘Can’t see them?’ Tony shook his head, in a bewildered fashion. ‘I don’t understand.’
Cord stared at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, don’t you? Really?’ And then she backed down. ‘In any case, I can’t leave at the moment.’
‘You could if you really wanted to.’
‘No, Daddy. I have to have an operation. Next month when I’m back from the States.’
Fear scalded him. ‘What? What – what kind of operation?’
‘It’s to remove some nodes in my throat. At least – it’s not definite. I might have it. We haven’t decided yet. The risk of permanent damage, you see.’
‘Darling, I’m – that’s awful.’
‘Well, it might not happen. We’re seeing the damage done next week. I just have to be careful.’ She rubbed at her throat again. ‘Listen, Daddy – I need to be there by four today—’
‘I know.’ She wasn’t looking at him but he nodded as if he knew her diary, the rhythms of her life, as if she wasn’t a near-stranger to him, his lovely, talented, lonely daughter. It struck him that he couldn’t even picture her home. I’ve never been to her flat. I don’t even know where she lives. My own daughter.
‘The thing is –’ she was saying, as he turned back to look at her. ‘The thing is, I woke up this morning and I was crying. And it keeps happening.’ She stared at him frankly. ‘Someone told me they loved me last week. A nice man, a good man, and I told him to go away, that he was mad. And I realised this morning, you know, these things, they’re because of you. And ’cause I’m off tomorrow and then this operation . . . I realised something else. That I couldn’t go another day without seeing you.’
He put out his hand. ‘Oh, darling. I’ve missed you too.’
But Cord’s face froze. ‘I don’t miss you. I mean I came to ask you to tell me the truth.’ She was nodding furiously, and then she took her hands out of her pockets again and rubbed her cheeks with her knuckles. ‘Are you the father?’
‘The who?’ For a moment, he honestly didn’t understand.
‘Ben’s children. Well – Madeleine’s children.’
Tony put his hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the light, from her gaze, as though he couldn’t look at her. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Cordy, have you lost your mind?’
He stayed like that, not moving: they were facing each other on the brow of the gently sloping hill. After a few moments, Cord slid her hands back into her coat. ‘So you are,’ she said, after a while. ‘Good. At least I know. You can’t do it any more, can you?’
‘Do what?’
She ignored him. ‘Does Ben know?’
‘Cord – I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He clutched his back, more for support than anything, but she merely nodded. Her face was quite white now, her stormy grey eyes utterly still and Tony, blinking fast, was terrified. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I saw you, Daddy. I saw you with her.’
‘Cordy, darling—’
‘It’s so much worse if you lie, Daddy. Don’t.’ She said it so softly. ‘Don’t lie any more. We saw you with Belinda Beauchamp when we were children. That was our childhood, Daddy. I saw you and Helen O’Malley together once, when we came to the theatre, but I didn’t understand. And then the night before the Proms, when I should have been . . . when Mads and Ben and Hamish and I were celebrating – I saw you in a pub with some girl and your hand was up her skirt and you were slobbering all over her and she was just staring into space, like she wished it was all over.’ Tony wrinkled his brow, trying to remember . . . ‘I grew up with you as a father. I know what you’re like. They say you have to accept it or else go mad. So I did. I shut out everything else.’ The wind whipped her hair around her face; she pushed it away. ‘I forgot about what I’d seen, about what it’s like, being in this family, and I entirely concentrated on singing. Only on my voice and myself. Because it’s easier, much easier that way.’
‘Helen, I don’t understand, honestly—’
‘Cordelia,’ she said, putting her hand with a terrible gentleness on his arm. ‘My name is Cordelia, Daddy. It’s just . . . on the one hand, there’s putting it about all over town and still being a good dad, because, oh, Daddy, you were!’
She broke off, biting her lip and staring at him, her face utterly white, her lips red with blood.
‘There’s all those things, and more, and then, then there’s screwing your son’s wife. Your daughter’s best friend. Your daughter-in-law! Getting her pregnant. Letting your son believe those children are his. When they’re his s-s-s—’ Her voice cracked. ‘They’re his sisters. They’re my sisters. You’re foul. It’s incest. You’ve – it’s abuse, what you did to her. Abuse. And I wish I didn’t know . . . but I do . . . And it wakes me up every morning.’ Tears poured down her white face. ‘Every morning it’s like I forget and then I remember and it’s – it’s killing me. It killed her, I know it did. And I did that to her. Sometimes I can’t think about anything else. All I think about is you. How you could do that.’
‘They’re not his sisters,’ said Tony, hoarsely. ‘I promise you, darling. I absolutely promise you. I swear it.’
She stamped her feet, with a growl of rage. ‘Why? Why are you like this?’
‘I swear to you, Cord. Cord! They’re not Ben’s sisters. You have to believe me, Cordy darling.’ His voice cracked – how could he make her understand? Should he even bloody try? ‘Listen, Mads was broken, trust me. She’d have killed herself at some point, I think. Honestly.’
‘So that makes it OK, then? Doesn’t matter if you were the one to break her, it’d have happened anyway?’
‘Listen to me. I knew her family. I know where she came from, I know how hard it was for her . . .’
‘She was my best friend, you vile, perverted idiot – she was my best friend!’ Cord’s voice rose. ‘Are you trying to tell me you knew her better than me?’
‘Yes!’ he shouted, almost exhilarated at feeling again. He spread his arms out. ‘Yes, I did, OK? I understood her. I knew her when she was little and I watched her growing up with you two and I could see it . . . some people are born to sadness, Cord, it’s true!’
‘No one knew her like I did,’ said Cord, her low voice thrumming with fury. ‘Not even Ben.’
It killed her, I’m sure it did. Suddenly Tony felt the chill of truth. ‘What did you say to her, before she took the overdose?’ he said. ‘You saw her that last night, didn’t you? I heard you arguing in the beach hut, when I came back from my walk – I’m sure it was you.’
Cord stared at him. ‘We went into the beach hut. I asked her about you. And she admitted it. I asked her how she could have, why on earth you . . . I told her—’ She gave a sob, and rubbed at her neck again. ‘Jesus. I told her what I thought of her, what we all thought. I made her cry. I left her there, crying.’ Tears were pouring down her cheeks now; he moved towards her and she flung his arm away, pushing him backwards with a force so great he stumbled. ‘I did that to her, and it was because of you. Not her, not her. You were older, you were like a father to her, and you—’ She shook her head. ‘You seduced her. You raped her. It is rape, when you coerce like that with persuasion and tricks and your old, old ways. I know you.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He was sweating; he took out his handkerchief. ‘It was
her – oh, it was both of us – I – how can I make you understand?’ He began to cough. ‘Can we sit down? I don’t feel well, Cord.’
‘Why are you like this?’ she said again. ‘I don’t understand. What happened to you, to make you like this? Not to be able to see what’s so obviously wrong, Daddy – how could you not have seen it?’
Black sunlight flooded his vision. ‘Listen to me, it wasn’t like that, you understand?’ He held out his hand. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit. Just let me explain. I’ve only ever wanted you – all of you – to have a proper family. Give you a perfect life.’
He broke off. She was laughing, as if it were genuinely funny.
‘You can’t act any more, can you? Those reviews for Hamlet. I told everyone how unfair they all were but they were right. It’s like a circus animal who knows which bit of the sawdust to creep around the ring to in time to the music but can’t remember why he’s there.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘You’re a joke.’ She spat the words out. ‘And it wouldn’t matter but for what a bad joke you are. And you don’t understand how serious it is. What you did. How happy we’d been . . .’
‘I do,’ Tony was shouting. ‘I wanted the Bosky to be a golden place, like it was for me, only I wanted you all to feel safe, and secure, and loved, and never be abandoned, not like I was. I knew if I could give you all that, give you that childhood, that you’d be OK whatever else happened. Y-you and Ben and Mads too, yes, Mads too, even if you don’t believe me. That’s what she wanted too—’ But she was laughing again, so loudly he couldn’t hear himself over it. He clapped his hands, wishing the pain in his head would go away, it was stopping him seeing clearly. He clapped and clapped. A dog walker, a hundred metres away, stared at him. A couple on the brow of the hill looked over towards them.
‘You’ve got an audience now,’ Cord said, her mouth turned down with the effort of not crying. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it, Daddy? People looking at you. You made that house a little stage for you and your intrigues, and we were the audience for you. And none of it was real!’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘None of it!’
Tony said with difficulty, ‘It was real to me. Always.’
‘No! I used to believe it. But you’ve lost it, Daddy – I don’t know what it was that you had but you’ve lost it. And I just want to know, what made you like this? What was it? Was it the war? You never talk about it. Was it Aunt Dinah? Listen to me.’ He shook his head, and suddenly she shouted again. ‘Listen to me! I tell you to listen to me! What made you like this? Why are you like this?’
He could hear a dog, barking in the distance. Tony looked around for it, wildly. Black shadows danced in front of his eyes. He stared ahead.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m going,’ she said, suddenly, and she straightened up. She was fainter with every second and he held his hand out towards her.
‘I can’t see you.’
But she was already walking away. ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry. If you won’t tell me anything, and you won’t even admit it, say sorry, I can’t stay. I have to go.’
‘No,’ said Tony, calling after her, but his voice was faint. His legs felt as though they’d turned to jelly. ‘Don’t go, Cordelia – come back here. Here.’
He could see the dog now, a black thing, a Labrador, perhaps – was it real? Could he really see it? Cord was further away from him now, ten metres or so.
‘If she’d just come back – if she’d only told me why, if she’d come back just once, Cordy . . .’ Tony sank to his knees, not caring any more, only wanting the violent, aching agony convulsing his side to stop. ‘She saved me, and I loved her so much, and she left.’ There was acid in his mouth; he opened his mouth and let it fall on to the grass, and he saw it was red, bright, dangerous, glossy red.
‘Daddy—’ Cord had come back, she had caught his arm. She sank to the ground, next to him, pushed his sparse hair away from his head. ‘Oh, shit. Shit – Look, I’ll run home and call an ambulance. Hey!’ she screamed, into the chill air. ‘Hey!! We need help! My father’s not well! Help!’
Her arm was under his back, and he leaned on her knees; it was strangely comforting, this pose: he’d done it enough times on stage, dying like this.
I’m Antony, I’m on stage again, he thought, and it made him smile.
Unarm, Eros; the long day’s task is done, and we must sleep.
Cord was still shouting, and he heard her voice crack. ‘Hey! You! You there! Yes!! Thank you so much, please hurry. Please—’
Her voice broke off. Tony closed his eyes, and heard the planes again, saw the tape on the windows, the floral print of Julia’s dress, smelled Daphne’s perfume. Then he saw Aunt Dinah’s face, peering over him in the hospital bed, for the first time in years.
‘There you are, Ant dear,’ she was saying. Her hair was exactly the same, her face, the little mole above her lip, her bright green eyes, the beauty of her, the faintest scent of sandalwood, of something exotic. ‘Aha! There you are at last. I’ve come to collect you. I’ve come to take you home.’
And she had. He closed his eyes, as his daughter called out, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying any more. He could hear her singing, her voice from long ago, the lilting purity of the age-old cadences:
I know that my Redeemer liveth
And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth—
The darkness was sliding over him again, as it had done when he was young, the soft settling of dust covering him after great noise and pain. Then it was quiet, no more voices. Just very quiet.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dorset, 1943
For a while, everything continued as normal but it wasn’t normal, he knew it. Strange things kept happening. Sweep vanished, never to be seen again. One day he was there, purring on the window seat in a contented ball, the next he was gone, and no trace of him was ever found. The weather was odd; sharp, cool, unpredictable. Dinah suddenly embarked upon a frenzied cleaning programme, clearing out the boxes everywhere and donating half her things to the church jumble sale. She had mended her bike, too: they were to go on their favourite ride up to St Aldhelm’s Head the following day. She was due to travel to London next week; Ant didn’t want her to go, even though the Blitz was over. He was afraid for her these days, for she seemed fragile, breakable: she who had won a bet to get on the last boat out of Basra, she who had survived desert storms and poisonous snakes, who had rescued him, borne him away from London.
At the beginning of the holiday, Ant had cycled into Swanage and found a chemist on Station Road who would sell him French letters. Depending on their plans for each day, either in the late afternoon or in the evening after dinner if she could manage to slip out, he and Julia met at the edge of the beach, and wandered together until they found an absolutely secluded spot, away from the dragon’s teeth and the wire.
Though he would search ceaselessly for it Tony would never get it back, the ecstasy and joy of those nights with Julia. He came to know her body better than his own, the crease between her groin and her leg, her round breasts, the freckles on her forearms and face, her long neck with the moles at the clavicle, her green eyes and the way she reacted when he stroked her and pushed inside her.
He would have more explosive sex, more illicit, more thrilling, more intense, but he would never find the same compatibility again, nor the secretive, joyous thrill of it that was, at the same time, entirely harmless. He would spend the rest of his life trying to recreate it, in dressing rooms and bedsits and hotel rooms.
‘Look,’ Ant said to Julia one night, as he lay in the crook of her arm, the soft sand cold beneath his shoulder blades. ‘Up there?’
Her fingers stroked his hair, his ear. ‘What’s that?’
‘The Milky Way. You can see it. It’s the blackout, Dinah says it makes it much easier to see the stars.’
‘She says a lot of things.’ She moved down further against him. ‘It’s colder
tonight, don’t you think?’
‘It’s August. Always a little colder than you imagine, August nights. I remember, my first summer here, how chilly it was . . . Here, put your dress on.’
‘How puritanical you are.’ But she slipped the dress on over her head. ‘We should get back soon.’
‘Where does he think you are tonight?’
‘Oh, the same as ever, that I’m with you at the Bosky and we’re reading Shakespeare together . . . I’m not lying to him, I am with you. He thinks your aunt’s house is one of study and intellectual retreat, so I’m in the clear. She wouldn’t tell on us, would she?’
‘It’s not Aunt Dinah one needs to worry about,’ Ant said heavily. ‘It’s Daphne. She’s supposed to be coming back.’
‘That awful old leech? How tedious. Why?’
‘She wrote last week, and since then – Oh, I don’t know.’ How to explain the incessant tidying, the mysterious shuffling about at all hours of the day and night, the muttering, the opening of drawers and putting things away? He pulled her closer to him, wishing it was always them, just them, that she wouldn’t ever break away from him. ‘She has some hold over Aunt D and I’m just not sure what.’
‘Is it like mistresses at school?’ He looked blank. ‘The kind that move in with each other and take up golf – like that?’
‘No – well, not sure. Not Daphne, no.’ He knew that much, at least. ‘With Aunt D one never knows.’
‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘She’s an enigma. She could be an Egyptian princess in disguise and it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise, would it. I used to simply long to be like her, when you were both first here,’ she said suddenly.
‘Dinah? Really?’ He was incredulous.
She knelt beside him, stroked his chest, ran her hands over his bare hips and bottom. ‘Oh, yes. When I had crushes on girls, before you. Miss Bright. Terrific sex appeal. And Dinah.’
Ant was appalled. ‘Aunt Dinah? I really don’t think she has any sex appeal. I don’t think she ever even thinks about . . . it . . . sex.’
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