101 Pieces of Me (19 page)

“Exactly, except that alcoholic drink and tobacco are legal, and cocaine is illegal. You can be arrested and imprisoned for possession of it, and if you are caught importing or selling it you’re in very deep trouble indeed.”

My interest increased. “Are you telling me that David uses this thing? Cocaine?”

“Yep,” he nodded, “along with the rest of his set.”

“What do they do with it? Drink it? Smoke it?”

“No, it is taken through the nose. They sniff it.”

“And they risk getting caught just to feel good?”

“It’s fashionable.” He gave a small shrug. “It’s what the people David wishes to impress do. And like cigarettes, the more you have the more you want.” He looked at me squarely. “Believe me, Clara, I’d never touch cocaine myself. I much prefer the old cigs, and whisky, of course. But people like Marjorie Cunningham are so dependent on cocaine to keep themselves happy, they cling to David because he knows where to get the stuff.”

A memory rose up, and I gasped. “Oh!” I stopped so suddenly that a man in a top hat bumped into us. He apologized, raised his topper and went on his way while I stared at Aidan, stricken. “That’s why you thought it was funny that I should imagine Marjorie had come to David for a job. She had come to him for cocaine, hadn’t she?”

He let his expression be his answer. I went on standing there, my brain busy. “So you are hoping to photograph David sniffing this stuff?” It was like a script from a film. Trying to control my voice, trying to be as nonchalant as Aidan, I pressed on. “And … you will tell David that you’ll give the photographs to the police unless he destroys the photographs taken in the hotel?”

“Exactly.” Aidan’s eyes had begun to glow a little. He began to walk on. “We’ll catch him unawares. You’ll set up the photograph, and I’ll take it. All you need to do is what you’ve been doing for the last six months. Act.”

I
had been cold, but now I was hot. I dragged my fur from around my neck, my face suddenly burning. My legs felt weak, and I sat down where I was, on the steps of a drinking-fountain. Aidan sat down one step lower, so our faces were on the same level. “I can’t do that!” I hissed.

“Why not?” His face had its hungry look. “You’re the obvious person to do it.”

I drew the fox’s body backwards and forwards between my hands, feeling its softness, wishing as ever that I was someone else. That nanny in her olive-green uniform, hand-in-hand with a toddler. The man running to and fro on the grass with a kite string in his hand, watching the kite dance in the sky with more interest than his small son. Any of the stone figures that adorned Marble Arch. “Aidan, you know very well why not. Acting with a script and a director is one thing, but this is real life. It’s
deceiving
, which isn’t the same thing at all.”

“But David deceived
you
!”

“Exactly!” I said irrationally. “And if I go anywhere near him, he’ll treat me just like he did in that hotel.” My voice began to waver a little. “I can’t go through a scene like that again. I don’t know David. I don’t know
you
. I’ll never be able to decide whether anything is fact, ever.” Inexplicably cold again, though the sun was strengthening, I put my fur back on. “Don’t you understand? I’m
scared
.”

“Clara, if you would just try and understand…”

“I
do
understand!” Tears smarted behind my eyes. The events of the last twenty-four hours had left me as battered as if it had been me that David had kicked to the ground, not Aidan. “Look, Aidan, I am not a …” – I struggled for the word I wanted – “a puppet, or a doll or something, with no feelings. I can’t turn on David and give him a dose of his own medicine, as if he meant nothing to me. He
does
mean something to me, as I thought we established last night.”

“Please hear me out, Clara, I beg you…”

I stood up. Park Lane swam before me. I blinked and it recovered its clarity. “No, I won’t. I don’t want to hear any more about this. Thank you for everything, but I am going back to the flat now to pack my case.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Aidan got to his feet. “You don’t know the way back, and anyway you haven’t got a door key.” He took my arm, and as he did so, the first drops of rain began to fall.

W
hen we got back to the flat, the sitting-room was almost dark. Aidan lit the gas lamps on the wall and blew out the match, his eyes on my face. I bustled about, unbuttoning my gloves and unclipping the fox’s tail from its mouth, taking off my hat and patting my hair. “My feet are freezing. Might I have a bath before I go?”

He went on looking at me, the spent match still in his hand. “Clara, you’re not going anywhere. Please, stop this silliness and listen to me, will you?”

“Silliness!” I was incensed. “Why am I being silly because I have refused to be party to pointless revenge? Why can you not admit defeat?”

He patted his pockets for cigarettes, retrieved a crumpled pack and searched it.

My patience broke. “And why must you
smoke
all the time?”

He found a cigarette and lit it, his eyes still on me. The smoke made a blue stalk in the air. “We all have our vices,” he said steadily. “And in answer to your other question, I cannot admit defeat because what I am proposing is not ‘pointless revenge’. It is an opportunity to do something that should have been done –
I
should have done – a long time ago.” He took a shaky breath, and his face took on a stubborn, determined look. “Clara, I must tell you that you are not the first to suffer at David Penn’s hands. But if you help me now, hopefully you will be the last.”

Illuminated from behind, Aidan’s features were almost invisible. And it seemed to me in that moment that everything else about him was invisible too. Who was this man? In the months we had worked together on the film, through all the scenes we had rehearsed and filmed, our physical proximity, our shared exhaustion, he had cultivated an air of cynicism, even arrogance, as if everyone else was a child and he an adult. He had behaved as if treating it all as a joke was the only way he could survive. Perhaps it was. His offer of future help, which I had not even understood at the time, remained the only chink in the door he kept so tightly closed.

As I stood there in my stockinged feet, coat and fur over my arm, my anger subsided. “Why do you care so much?” I asked softly. “If I end up being cited in a divorce case and am branded a … what did you call it? … a scarlet woman, then that does not affect you at all. If I do not agree with what you propose, what does that matter to you?”

He went to the window. The curtains were not yet drawn. He looked down to the street, but it was clear that he was not seeing it. After three or four puffs, he began to speak in a sort of distracted murmur, as if he were talking to himself.

“If I tell you what I know about David, you will understand. Did you know his real name is David Penhaligon?”

I thought of Mr Reynolds, my old schoolmaster, instructing us in English about the British Empire, and my da at home, using his mixture of Welsh and English to tell me about the British government’s attitude to Wales, the Welsh and our ancient language. Cornwall had an ancient language too, and “pen” meant “head” in both of them. I wondered, randomly, if David knew that.

“No, I didn’t.”

“They are a family of criminals,” said Aidan. “His father’s been in prison for years, and his mother went off with someone else. He started in films as a runner, a messenger boy, and because he’s good-looking he got taken up by a rich woman and taught manners. She gave him money to start his company. But then of course he dropped her as soon as he began to be successful.”

I tried to digest what he was saying. “But how do you know all this?”

“Because…” He sat down on the sofa and reached for the ashtray. “She was my mother.”

I
was so surprised I could not move. I remained glued to the middle of the green rug, feeling its pile through the soles of my stockings, thinking uncontrollable thoughts about people’s mothers, and my own mother, and betrayal, and the fight between David and Aidan, and the sorrow and shame of ruined reputations. I tried to say something sympathetic, or at least not too crass, but I had no breath to speak.

“I was employed on the first film David was the AD on, about five years ago,” continued Aidan. “He latched on to me, I suppose, because I was better educated and better connected than he was, and he hoped to raise himself up by clinging to my coat-tails. He met my mother because she used to like to come and watch me on set sometimes in those days. He fawned over her, and she was so lonely – my father had died two years before. She was flattered and was forever telling me how kind and wonderful he was. But I never trusted him and he knew it, though he maintained a polite façade. He couldn’t stand the fact that I saw through him. I knew he was an opportunist and a liar, persuading my dear Ma into giving him money while carrying on with God knows how many other women, sniffing cocaine and keeping every champagne producer in France in business.”

My surprise had been replaced by a nervous, unsettled feeling. Robert Palliser had suggested I invite my own family to tour the studios. If I had, who could say what influence David might have exerted? The thought of my impressionable brother falling under his spell terrified me. “So…” I began slowly, considering each word, “your revenge would not be pointless. But it would still be revenge.”

He sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead. “Yes, I suppose so.” Agitated, he was smoking fast.

I watched him in silence while his cigarette rapidly diminished. “May I ask … what happened to your mother?”

“Oh, she drowned.” He said this matter-of-factly. But the gaslight revealed that every tendon in his neck, in its stiff collar and tie, was tight, and perspiration filmed his upper lip. “Apparently, she fell off a ship. But whatever they say, Clara, I am convinced that in actual fact, she jumped.”

My hand went to my mouth, and I let out an involuntary whimper.

“You see, after David left her,” he went on, “she was never the same. Someone suggested she go on a cruise. For a relaxing holiday, I suppose. I waved goodbye to her at Tilbury, and the next time I saw her was in the mortuary.”

My body felt as if it had been winded by a severe blow. But my limbs had recovered their ability to move, so I sat down beside him, and with the small amount of breath I could muster, I asked, “But how can you bear to be anywhere near David, after what happened?”

“Well, of course I swore I would never work with David Penn again, but financially, needs must. I hadn’t worked for months and months, and when the job on
Innocence
came up, my agent urged me to take it. He doesn’t know about David. I wavered, then when I heard that a new young actress was going to play the lead I decided to do it.” He took a few pensive puffs. “I thought I would be able to manage for the sake of a starring role, but I couldn’t. You saw what it’s like between David and me. And when he started getting his claws into
you
, imagine how I felt.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. I had never seen him chain smoke like this, though the reason for his excessive drinking and smoking was becoming much clearer. “Clara, I know all this is in the past,” he said decisively. “I know that preserving your honour will not restore my mother’s and will not bring her back to me. Above all, I do not wish you to think you have gone from being deceived by one man to being forced into something against your will by another. But David Penn has not reformed. If we do not do something now he will go on considering himself above the law, just like his father did before he discovered he wasn’t and ended up in jail.” His voice softened a little, but his expression remained unyielding. “Do you not see? By helping me do this, you will make David think twice before he tries to ruin someone else.”