Crimson (15 page)

Joe looked over his neat desk.

“Why did you want to see me, Elinor?” Billy made all her business arrangements and had signed all the contracts prepared by Joe for the thirty seven publishers around the world who had purchased Deadly Fortune.

When Paramount Pictures bought the fibn rights to Deadly Fortune, which had been an instant best-seller, and Vivien Leigh agreed to star in it, Billy had bought a vintage Lagonda, and Elinor had once again made a secret visit to an empty house about twenty miles distant from the cottage, a dilapidated estate called Starlings. The house was too big to run comfortably in wartime but not big enough to be useful to the forces, so shortly after war was declared, the entire estate had been turned into carrot fields; after the war, when the boisterous land girls and Italian prisoners of war who raised the carrots happily abandoned them, the land was left neglected. Now the place had fallen into disrepair, its earth knee high in coarse grass.

In Joe’s dark office, Elinor outlined her plan with barely rj6 contained excitement. She wanted to surprise Billy by buying him his own country place! “It’s not as grand as Larkwood, but it’s just as pretty!” Elinor said.

“It’s outside a little village called Maiden Bradley, near Warminster. I’d like you to hand lethe purchase, Joe.” The folder she gave him included snapshots of a decrepit but beautiful small stone Elizabethan manor house, with a cherry orchard to one side of it.

“Don’t you think, Joe, that if Billy lived in the way he was brought up, he would … settle down, and relax, and be happy?” Poor Elinor was still hoping that she could tame the old rascal, Joe thought. Aloud he said, “It’s beautiful, Elinor, but … how can you afford this house?” “It’s a bargain five thousand pounds!” Elinor exclaimed.

“Paramount paid forty thousand dollars for Deadly Fortune. There must be enough money somewhere, even after tax.” Joe said uncomfortably, “All the money was paid to Billy, as your manager.” There was a note of sorrow in his voice.

Elinor looked sharply at him. Slowly she said, “You mean … he’s spent it all?” Joe hesitated.

“I believe that Billy may have made some unwise investments on the stock exchange.” He realized that Elinor, who could rationalize and excuse her husband’s drunken bullying and lechery, was now faced with undodgeable evidence that Billy was a liar, a cheat, and some might say a thief. Joe added, “To be fair, Elinor, Billy insisted on repaying every penny I’ve ever lent him.” Elinor’s eyes filled with tears. Nothing in her hand, for all that work.

Up to now Elinor had willingly believed Billy’s plausible explanations of his lying, cheating, and other petty dishonesty: he had done it to help someone out; he hadn’t realized what he was getting into; he had been lied to; he had been let down. But nothing could explain away this betrayal.

“I might be able to raise a loan for you,” Joe said, “or a further book option of course, I couldn’t go directly to your publisher behind Billy’s back…” Which meant that he would, Elinor reckoned.

“I’m confident,” he went on, “that Stansfield and Hart would be open to some agreement so that you could purchase this house. After all, you will probably be happier and write better in more congenial surroundings.” Fighting back tears, Elinor said, “Please speak to Mr. Stansfield as soon as possible.” She looked hard at Joe, who knew that she was also saying, I’m trusting you to do this in some way that won’t humiliate Billy, because otherwise my life will be intolerable, and I shall have to live with the real Billy instead of my romantic view of him, which is the only thing that makes the reality bearable for me.

Mentally replacing her rose-coloured spectacles, Elinor said firmly, “Without Billy to make me work, and to sell my work, I would have achieved nothing. So I suppose it is really his money … Because truly I owe my career to Billy.” She had once argued that the talent was hers, but Billy had quickly pointed out that -the talent had been trained and disciplined by him, and so her success was due to him. Billy repeatedly told her, “You owe everything to me. Without me, you would be nothing! Without me, you would never be able to write. And without me, you would certainly never be published. I am the one who persuaded publishers to risk their money on your work.” Elinor had to admit there was some truth in what he said. Before Billy’s schooling, she had known nothing of the craft of writing, and she had had no idea how to discipline herself.

Joe looked at Elinor. There were things he would have liked to say to her, but it wouldn’t be correct to do so. Besides, Billy was indisputably the man in Elinor’s life, and Joe did not intend to interfere in their marriage.

riAOM11NDAY 13 JULY 1947 I’VND 06 year later, after her brisk midday walk, Elinor strolled up the winding drive of her new home, between rhododendron bushes that formed great banks of shiny, dark leaves splashed with mauve and white blossoms. This floral guard of honour meandered half a mile, from the house to the hedged boundaries of nineteen acres of garden and parkland.

After she rounded the final bend and could see Starlings in front of her, Elinor paused to admire it once again. The long, low, beautifully proportioned Elizabethan house, with its front of mellow brick, stone mullions, and tall chimneys, now looked as well-kept as it probably had been four hundred years earlier.

Briefly Elinor remembered their Earls Court home: the entire apartment would have fitted into the oak-panelled entrance hall of Starlings. Edward had been raised in that cramped flat in sooty London, but his daughters were now able to enjoy a gracious life in the country, thanks to their gran’s busy brain and ever-scribbling right hand.

As she inhaled the honey-tinged air, Elinor wished that her mother could know about her success, could see her lovely house, as romantic as if it had sprung up from a child’s book. How strange it was, she thought, that her mother’s idea of bettering herself had been to get away from the grinding, incessant toil of life on the land. But now that Elinor could do as she pleased after midday what she most loved was to work in the soil. Gardening gave her great satisfaction; it also gave her time to think of new plots for books, to dream up new schemes, imagine new characters.

Sometimes, of course, her mind wandered to real matters, some of them quite disturbing. One memory she couldn’t seem to escape was the day

they had moved into Starlings, when she had accidentally uncovered a batch of battered photographs in Billy’s den. They were black-and white studio pictures of what looked like a ten-year-old girl, shot from the waist downward. Her slim, coltish legs were sprawled across a bed; Elinor recognized the dragon patterned blue bedspread that she had scrapped when they left Earls Court. The child wore short white socks and black, Shirley Temple, ankle-strap shoes, and that was all. In some pictures, she lay on her back; in some, she was on her stomach, one leg languidly kicking back, bent at the knee.

When, with shaking hands, Elinor showed these pictures to Billy, he shrugged his shoulders and agreed that the photographs were obscene. He said he thought he had destroyed them: they had been taken years ago by a photographer who had been bombed out of his studio, when Billy had put him up for a few days. Elinor had been in the country, preparing the cottage for their occupation.

Elinor wanted to believe him. With stubborn determination, she focused on the many pleasant things in her life and shut her eyes to Billy’s increasingly unpleasant behaviour which was, Elinor told herself, only due to the fact that once again he was drinking far more than was good for him.

Billy’s three granddaughters, now six, seven, and eight years old, were embarrassed and bewildered when “Daddy Billy smelt funny’, which invariably meant he would ‘act funny” as well, frequently teasing them in a rough way, sometimes even searing them.

Annabel and Miranda ran off and hid whenever they heard the front door slam followed by Billy’s heavy, uncertain tread upon the stairs. But Clare reacted differently. Perhaps it was because he was irritated by Clare’s anxiously self-righteous air the air or an elder sister who felt she was supposed to look after the little ones that Billy picked on Clare more than on the other two.

But of course, Billy treated Clare with cruelty only when there was nobody around to see him do it: when Elinor was visiting her publisher in London, or when it was the nanny’s day off. Clare, whose instinct was to smooth, not ruffle, troubled waters, never mentioned her grandfather’s harsh treatment, and indeed she would have found it difficult to describe what she was complaining about. Few children feel that they have the power to complain about an adult; and every child in Clare’s class at school talked of being slapped occasionally, or beaten if the crime was serious.

As a result of his mistreatment of her, Clare avoided Billy whenever possible. When she returned from school, she always asked, “Is Daddy Billy at ho meT And if the answer was yes, no matter how cold the weather, Clare would immediately ask if she could play in the garden or go for a walk in the woods.

Poor Clare. As the eldest, she was the only sister with vague memories of her dead parents, and she had a forlorn air, as if she were a lost child, forgotten on some railway station platform. She survived Billy’s cruel attacks in the only ways that a vulnerable young child could: by mentally withdrawing from any painful scene and by hopefully using magical means. Hidden behind the rhododendron bushes, she would mix potions of berries and grass and daydream, as she willed Daddy Billy to die.

Other minor superstitions also helped Clare: if she could count up to seventy-five while holding her breath; if she put her knickers on in the morning, left foot first; if there was an even number of letters in the advertisement on the side of the school bus then he wouldn’t be at home when she returned from school. Sometimes these spells worked.

As Clare grew more apprehensive and frightened reported as ‘highly strung” by her school, Elinor saw that, like her father, she was

developing into a quiet, nervous child. Elinor hied to blank out these comparisons because they conjured up guilt when she recalled unpleasant memories of Edward’s childhood: his father’s bewildering behaviour and humiliating, drunken cruelty had wrecked Edward’s selfconfidence until he grew bigger and stronger than his father; then, when Edward was at home, Billy curbed his bullying.

Instead, Elinor reminded herself how wdll Billy treated Annabel. Golden-haired and pretty, she was Billy’s favourite grandchild; she would jump on his knee, put her little arms around him, and lean her silken head against his shirt. Billy was flattered by her flirtatious manipulation and responded with generosity. When Annabel had made Billy smile, she would quickly ask him for what she wanted.

Shrewd little Annabel. Billy couldn’t be bothered to torment Miranda.

“Dull little thing,” he said.

“Nothing to say for herself. No fun.” Clever little Miranda. Unfortunately, Billy’s increasingly bad behaviour no longer caused only local scandal. He had given several regrettable interviews to London newspapers; Elinor’s publisher had pointed out to her the folly of such actions. Her public wished to think of her as a romantic creature draped upon a chaise-longue in a n6glig, who wrote with quill pen on crackling parchment to a background accompaniment of gentle Scarlatti. They should not hear that Elinor was a half-witted puppet who could not have written her books without her husband’s Svengali-like direction and inspiration. There had also been strong rumours also, unfortunately, started by Billy that he had actually written Elinor’s books.

“But surely nobody believes th at?” Elinor had protested.

“You have all my manuscripts, written in longhand, in my handwriting.” “Plenty of hacks will print a malicious story, without bothering to check that it’s true,9 Mr. Stansfield had said.

“Malicious gossip sells newspapers, which makes money for newspaper proprietors.”

“Why tell me? Why don’t you talk to Billy?” the wretched Elinor asked.

“I have talked to your husband, but unfortunately it hasn’t stopped him. I hope you can make him see how damaging such publicity is for all of us.”

As Elinor stared now at her beautiful house, she couldn’t help recalling that depressing luncheon with her publisher. She felt vexed with herself. Why did such unpleasant thoughts not stay hidden at the back of her mind? Particularly today, when she should be looking forward to her hour of triumph in her new home. She should be checking that the Georgian-mahogany table had been properly laid and the wine decanted, and that the food preparation was proceeding smoothly for her luncheon party. Because, for the first time, Elinor was about to meet her sisterin-law as an equal.

Behind her, a horn hooted. She turned to see Madorie waving from a battered prewar Armstrong-Siddeley. Drat! They had arrived early. Elinor steeled herself to assume her normal air of optimistic happiness as she prepared to show her romantic home to her sisterin-law.

Madorie’s admiration for Starlings somehow left Elinor feeling depressed.

“Such a lovely old house have you had it checked for woodworm?” Madorie trilled as she ate her rabbit pie.

“And subsidence? The Crawleys lived in a house very similar to this. Had to be pulled down before it fell on them … Delicious carrots, although I find a knob of butter helps the flavour … What an original idea to spread a lace tablecloth on a luncheon table…”

After their guests had departed, Billy returned to the dining room to help himself to another glass of port.

“You’ll

neW get it, right, old girl,” he grinned at Elinor.

“Maorie -win never let you forget that, to her, you’re a jumped-up farm labourer, and whatever you do she’s never going to change her view. I can’t understand why you bother with the old bitch, but then whatever you hold against me, no one can say I’m a snob.”

“No, you’re not a snob,” Elinor said, trembling with fury, “but you do love using me to tease your family. You were teasing them when you first took me to Larkwood. You were showing your brother, who was going to inherit all the family wealth and power, that you had it in your power to humble your family by introducing me into it.” She paused as an idea struck her.