Chapter Thirty-Two
March 1993
‘Well, that’s very strange.’ Althea had appeared in the doorway, the phone receiver still in her hand, the curling wire of the phone stretched out behind her. ‘You’ll never guess who that was, darling.’
Tony heard, but ignored, the odd note in her voice. He stretched out in his basket chair and nestled further into his rug, looking down the long thin garden. He could see a blackbird wrestling with a plump worm in the white-gold light of the spring afternoon. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Guess.’
Tony’s head pounded, as it did so often these days when he was crossed, or not given his way. He said, ‘I don’t want to guess.’
Althea’s voice rose. ‘Just guess, darling!’ He turned to the doorway and she smiled at him, and there was something ghastly about her smile.
‘I don’t want to guess.’
‘Cord. It’s Cord.’ Althea’s voice shook. ‘She’s just got off the train at St Margaret’s. She’s coming here. She – she wants to see you.’
He started, and saw how pleased she was to have got a reaction out of him. He barely noticed her these days. Which was strange, she had screeched hysterically at him once, in a little showdown a few months after Mads had died. She was the only one left now, she’d pointed out, gleefully spiteful: wasn’t it about time he paid her a little more attention? And she was right: they’d all gone, over time. Not just the critics who’d abandoned him after Hamlet, or the willing, soft, pliable girls who wouldn’t go near an old, blistered, shaking man like him, or the jovial like-minded friends whom he’d pushed away for years now. Not just the parts, the offers, the ringing telephones and letters desperately offering astronomical fees for the tiniest of roles, no. The others had gone, those he loved.
Ben had gone, decamped to LA, to work on that imbecilic Robot Master franchise. He’d bought a house in Laurel Canyon. Said he might stay out there for a few years. He’d taken those wee girls with him.
Althea had been to visit him already, to look after the girls – Tony grimaced. She loved her granddaughters. An agonising, aching pain flowered in his chest, making him wince, groan under his breath. Althea had no idea – or did she? Lately, she was unknown to him, as mysterious as she had been at the beginning of their relationship, when he wanted her so desperately, pursued her with the ardour of a man possessed, thought only of her, dreamed only of her, her long slim legs, her cool, off-hand tone, her quirky, drawling conversation. He had lost her, he supposed, years ago, the first time she betrayed him, but he’d been too busy screwing everything else that moved to notice . . . and what it had unleashed . . .
He shifted in his chair, trying to trick the pain away. It came often to him now, sometimes waking him at night.
Cord he hadn’t seen since Madeleine’s memorial service: a grim affair at the Norman church in the village with the ashes scattered on the beach afterwards, the end of summer.
He knew what Mads had told him, that night they’d had together. He remembered her saying it as they lay together on the narrow divan bed, wrapped in that Indian silk-screen printed throw. Julia’s empty urn lay on the floor by the door, which was ajar, banging very slightly in the breeze.
They had scattered Julia’s carefree spirit and her honest, solid body, now reduced to ash, to the winds and the seas. They had walked in silence down to the beach, following the sunset, and at one point Tony gazed at the setting sun for a second too long, so that his irises became clouded, his vision blurred; he was acutely aware, suddenly, of her slim frame beside him, of the intensity of her presence, of how she reminded him of Julia –
Julia running through the grasses to the beach, Julia clambering over the dragon’s teeth, Julia laughing as she sat on top of him, her white teeth glinting, her wild hair burnished to golden floss in the sun . . . her strong slim feet, running on ridged sand, the two of them on the porch steps, eating cherries, Dinah sitting on the wicker chair, listening to the radio, or reading aloud from her diaries, or watching them act together . . .
Althea had been an obsession, but Julia was his other half. And he saw it then, as the sun began to slip behind the land and they reached the beach hut, and the girl beside him turned, her hand on his arm, eyes full of tears, and said how much she loved him, how much it meant to her to have him there, how Julia had loved him . . . And he had kissed her, and she had pulled him towards her, and he had encircled her in his arms, and kissed her again . . .
And here she was looking up at him, gazing intently at him, and she was Julia and Madeleine but mostly, to him then, Julia.
It had been astonishing – intense, electric, her hair, her frantic, almost glazed expression – and he had felt, for the first time in years, like a real man again, as simple as that.
But afterwards, when he put his arm around her, as he tried to whisper in her ear, stroke her hair – no. It had been immediately wrong. He’d always been in control after any encounter like this, pacifying, soothing, comforting, flirting. But it was different. It was Mads. His daughter-in-law. He had screwed Ian’s daughter, a girl he’d known since she was a child. The girl who’d married his son.
The old lines he normally used . . . he trembled, covered with a fine pelt of icy sweat.
Sitting up afterwards, that long pale silvery mane of hers tumbling down her moonlit naked back and the disgust and guilt flooding him. Like the first time. That very first time all those years ago. And she’d said, ‘That’s all I wanted.’ Not adoringly, but matter-of-factly. Twisting the hair into a ponytail-thing again.
And he’d said, immediately, ‘Darling, we shouldn’t have done that. We mustn’t – we mustn’t do it again.’
She’d stood up and pulled on her underwear, hugged herself into her bra, winced as she rotated her shoulder blade, quite unselfconsciously. ‘You squashed me a bit. It’s jolly uncomfortable, that bed. I’d forgotten.’
‘Do you hear me?’ Tony felt sick. It was dark outside. The open door . . . the others back at the house . . .
She’d shaken her head, and pulled her sundress over her body. Her lips were pressed together when she emerged, and she was pale, her hair still tousled from where he had tangled it around his fingers, wrapped it over himself . . .
What have I done? Tony didn’t know what to say. He stared at her and thought to himself, But you’re the same. You’re the same as me and that’s why you understand it. You’re broken too.
‘Mads – when I saw you on the beach—’ He wiped his forehead. He was shaking. ‘I – I thought you were her. Julia. I shouldn’t have . . .’ He clutched her hands, as she stood in front of him. ‘Oh, God. What have I done?’
But she had simply said, ‘I wanted to. Don’t think about it. We won’t ever talk about it again.’
We won’t ever talk about it again. He’d caught her gaze once when Iris had begun to walk. He’d looked over at Madeleine, standing in the corner biting her nails and they had stared at each other, for a split second that told him what he had long dreaded – or wanted, he wasn’t sure. But she had looked away after a split second, begun wiping the table – she became obsessed with germs, after she had the girls.
Since they were born she had changed: even paler, even thinner than before, as though they had taken some life away from her. She was relentlessly, intensely concerned with them, and them alone. He knew it all came from this one night. It had driven her mad.
It was Ben who found his wife in the beach hut, curled up on the bed seemingly sleeping like a child. They all kept asking the same things: how had she got hold of the anti-emetic and the pentobarbital and why she would have done such a thing? But it was easy for her to get hold of, in her line of work, and he knew why, in fact Tony was the only one of them who wasn’t surprised. He understood Madeleine better than any of them. Better than her oldest friend, better than her husband. She was lost.
Tony’s eyes were heavy; he pulled the rug over himself as the pain shot viciously down his side. Through the open door he could hear Althea humming something in the kitchen. She was never in the kitchen, other than for the Cup-a-Soup or to make coffee. She never hummed, either. The house was quiet now, when once it had been full of lives, children, careers, visitors, friends.
‘Tony? Tony!’
He must have been dozing when she arrived, for suddenly Tony opened his eyes and there was his daughter in front of him. He couldn’t remember if she’d been there already – no, he thought.
‘H-hello, darling,’ he said, carefully. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
Cord nodded. ‘Hi.’ Her hands were plunged into a long navy coat; her nose was pink with the spring cold – she had always had a pink nose in winter, he remembered suddenly. All his memories now were of summers. Her dark hair curled about her heart-shaped face. Love, and pride in her, made Tony’s chest creak painfully. He felt nauseous; he was unused to company now. Suddenly he had a violent wish that she’d just go away: it was too much.
Althea stood behind them.
‘Darling, would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘No thanks, Mumma.’
‘Something else to drink, something stronger? I suppose we could have a little gin if we’ve got any—’ Althea looked at her watch.
‘No. Nothing, thank you.’ Cord perched herself on the edge of the table and cleared her throat. ‘I’m not staying. I have a concert tonight. The Messiah.’
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ Tony said, with an effort, and the arching opening chords of the aria sounded in his ears.
‘That’s your favourite, isn’t it,’ Althea said brightly, and Cord and Tony both nodded at the same time and he knew what she was thinking of: the old Huddersfield Choral Society recording, almost worn out through excess playing every Christmas in the big, airy sitting room upstairs. They never went in there now.
‘The trumpet shall sound,’ said Tony, raising his hands to imitate the action of the trumpet. ‘Remember, Cordy?’
But his daughter looked away, and then she said, ‘I can’t stay. There’s a rehearsal in South Ken—’
‘Oh.’ Althea glanced into the mirror. ‘I see. Do you want anything to—’
‘Mumma, could you leave us, please? I’ll come and have a chat afterwards. But there’s something I need to ask Daddy. And I don’t have very long.’ She cleared her throat again: her voice was hoarse. He saw her stand up, put her hand on her mother’s arm. ‘Please, Mumma.’
When they were alone, Cord did not look at him. She just said, ‘Can we go for a walk? It’s a nice day. We could go to the park.’
Walking was agony now, but he didn’t want to say no to her. He shuffled to the coat rack and then down the steps, through the long garden and out on to the lane that led into Marble Hill Park. She walked behind him, in silence.
It was the Easter holidays; children were running and screaming in the playground at the bottom of the lane, overlooking the water. Tony looked at them with interest. ‘Children make so much more noise than you imagine, don’t they?’ he said. ‘I always forget that. Just playing, and it sounds like murder.’ He glanced across the swollen banks of the river to where Ham House stood in the gentle sunlight, its dramatic purple-and-black bulk brooding at the edge of the riverbank. ‘The foot ferry’s running again, look,’ he said, talking to fill her silence. ‘And they’ve done something over there, cleaned up those boats. That tramp who lived up there – I say, he’s gone.’
‘When was the last time you left the house, Daddy?’ she said, curiously.
‘Oh. I – not for a while, to be honest. Not been very well.’
With no emotion she said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
He said, casually, knowing how to hook the bait, ‘They don’t know. It’s my side. I get these pains. They’ve scanned me. Nothing there but it lays me flat sometimes.’
‘Oh.’ Cord walked on, towards the park. He followed her, as fast as he could.
‘Have you spoken to your brother lately?’ he said, as she fell into step beside him.
‘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.