Fear in the Sunlight (18 page)

He looked round the room, made vulnerable by having been the first to speak and keen that someone else should join in. It was Astrid Lake who offered solidarity. ‘For me, the greatest fear is rejection,’ she admitted, unprompted. ‘I’m adopted. My parents gave me up when I was too young to remember anything about them, and no matter how happy my childhood was in the end, or how often I tell myself that there must have been a good reason for it, I can’t quite get over the fact that they gave me away.’ She smiled at Lascelles. ‘Like Danny, I seem to have chosen a profession which thrives on what I’m most afraid of.’

‘You’d be surprised by how quickly you develop a thick skin.’ The words were cynical‚ but they were delivered with a genuine kindness and offered as advice rather than criticism. Josephine looked round and saw Bella Hutton standing in the doorway. She walked over to the fireplace and put her brandy down on the mantelpiece. ‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ she said, with the confidence of someone whose arrival in a room made normal conversation impossible. ‘You were talking about rejection.’

The girl glanced at Hitchcock‚ but he showed no sign of resentment at Bella’s intrusion into the conversation; on the contrary, he seemed more interested than ever. ‘Yes. I was going to say that I feel it to a certain extent whenever I finish a film,’ she explained. ‘For a while, it’s like being in a family: there are roles and hierarchies, people you get on with and people you don’t, but personalities don’t matter because you’re stuck with them and you make the best of things. What counts is that you have a place, no matter how small, and you know exactly what it is. You can rely on it. Then everyone moves on and you have to start again, doing whatever’s necessary to fit in. I suppose that reminds me of things I’d rather forget.’ She looked at Bella. ‘I don’t know if the idea that I might become too tough to care about that makes me feel better or worse.’

Hitchcock waited to see if Bella intended to respond, but she said nothing so he continued his way round the room. ‘You’ve been very quiet since dinner, Mr Turnbull. Is there anything you’d like to share with us?’

Leyton Turnbull seemed to have drunk himself sober. The erratic behaviour of earlier had vanished‚ and, when he spoke, his voice was calm. ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ he said quietly, unable to meet Hitchcock’s eye.

‘Sorry? I don’t understand.’

‘Everything you said at dinner, what you all think of me. I’m afraid it’s true. I’ve seen him very clearly tonight – the man I’ve become.’ He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. ‘And I can see my future very clearly, too. You’re right, Hitch. It’s terrifying.’ He pushed his chair back and stood up.

‘Look, Turnbull, I’m sorry for what I said.’ Daniel Lascelles caught his arm as he walked past, but he shook it off and walked out of the room with more dignity than he had managed all night. They watched him go. David Franks looked nervously at Hitchcock, whose expression remained inscrutable. Astrid Lake seemed genuinely upset.

Archie leant forward and whispered in Josephine’s ear. ‘How much of this is genuine, do you think?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I get the feeling that he’s only just started. If this is going on all weekend, perhaps we should decamp to Bangor.’

Hitchcock’s manner suggested she was right. ‘How about you, Mr Franks?’ he asked, without any hint of awkwardness. ‘What makes you tremble?’

‘Fire,’ Franks said‚ without a moment’s hesitation. ‘When I was fourteen, my father was burnt alive and I watched it happen. I wake to his screams every morning of my life.’ The room was silent‚ and Josephine looked at Archie in horror. For the first time, Hitchcock was thrown completely and stared half accusingly at his colleague, as if the game were the biggest victim in what had just been said. Alma seemed genuinely devastated. She reached across and covered Franks’s hand with her own. ‘I’m so sorry, David,’ she said quietly. ‘We had no idea. It must have been horrific for you.’

‘Yes, it was.’ He bowed his head, and no one spoke. When he looked up again, he was grinning. ‘Only joking,’ he said, squeezing Alma’s hand apologetically and winking at her husband. ‘My father’s alive and well and living in a nursing home in Croydon.’

For a moment, Josephine thought Hitchcock was going to hit him; instead, he walked over to Franks’s chair and slapped him heartily on the back. ‘Very good, David,’ he said, but his expression changed. ‘Let’s just pray there are no fires in South London tonight. If one should break out now, think how you’ll feel in the morning. Now, do you want to tell us what
really
frightens you, or shall we move on?’

Alma looked worried. ‘Maybe we should leave it there, Hitch. I think we all know each other well enough by now, and some dancing might be a better idea.’ Josephine glanced hopefully at her friends and saw her own discomfort reflected in their faces; even Lettice and Lydia seemed eager to get out of the room.

‘It seems a shame to stop now, just when things are getting interesting.’ Bella smiled at Alma, although she seemed as unsettled by Franks’s joke as everyone else. ‘And I’ve missed a lot of the fun. I don’t even know if you’ve shared your darkest fears yet?’

Having shown no interest in taking part, Alma suddenly seemed intent on rising to the challenge, and Josephine wondered what issue existed between the two women to make Alma so reluctant to back down. ‘Crowds,’ she said simply. ‘When I was a child, my parents took me to see the King’s funeral.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I was very small and I lost hold of my father’s hand. There was a sea of people‚ and it was impossible for me to stand my ground. I ended up being dragged through the crowds, and since then I’ve been very claustrophobic. The thought of not being able to breathe terrifies me.’

Bella nodded. ‘Although there’s more than one way to suffocate someone.’

The man whom Marta had pointed out to Josephine as Hitchcock’s cinematographer hadn’t said a word since they arrived, but there was something in the way he stood up now which expressed his disgust with the evening as eloquently as any speech could have done. His movement distracted the director from whatever he had been about to say to Bella. ‘Are you leaving us already, Mr Spence?’

‘I’ve had enough of this, Hitch. I need some fresh air and I’m not in the mood for games.’

‘I’m not sure I can allow you to leave without telling me what I want to know, Jack.’

‘I’m not sure you can stop me.’

The two men stared defiantly at each other, and Josephine got the impression that their conversation was not simply about the evening. In the end, Spence sat down again, but it was far from an act of submission. ‘All right. I’ll tell you what frightens me. Gallipoli in 1915. They sent me out there to take photographs. Before the war, I’d never seen a dead body. I knew that was about to change, but I never knew how bad it would be.’ He looked at Hitchcock. ‘People will tell you that reality is never as bad as your imagination, but they’re wrong. The first thing we saw when we got off the boat was a big tent, like one of those marquees you get at a village fete. We went over to open it. I don’t know what we thought we were going to find, and the smell as we began to unlace the sides should have told us something, but none of us was prepared for a pile of dead Englishmen, hundreds of corpses lying on top of each other, their eyes wide open, starting to rot.’

Hitchcock pushed the decanter across to him but Spence ignored it. ‘We started to bury them, but there were so many. You don’t think about that, do you? Having to find somewhere for the dead. You cling on to decency and dignity for a bit, but it soon defeats you. We pushed them into the trenches, but it was impossible to keep them all covered. We lived with the dead. Their arms and legs taunted us, sticking out of the earth like they’d just rolled over in bed. The soil was soft and springy underfoot because of the bodies, like autumn in the woods, when you know you’re walking on decay.’ He paused, and changed his mind about the drink. As he poured brandy, Josephine looked at Archie, but he had bowed his head‚ and she wondered what fugitive images had found their way back to him thanks to Spence’s words. ‘So we buried them, but they kept coming, more each day. And we found ways to deal with it. If a hand came out of the soil, we’d shake it as we went past. It wasn’t disrespect, it was a way to cope. We all did it. Then one day I grabbed a hand and it held on. We’d buried him alive, for Christ’s sake. We were so tired and so used to death that we could no longer tell the difference.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘I scrambled in the dirt as if I were insane, scraping it off his face until I heard him moan and saw his eyelids flicker. When I was sure I’d found him in time, I started to cry with relief. I began to haul him out, but that wasn’t what he wanted; he wanted me to finish it there and then. He clutched at my clothes, pleading with me to kill him. I didn’t have a rifle with me‚ and I couldn’t leave him on his own, so I put my hands round his throat and choked him, and this time I made sure. And do you know what? He looked grateful.’

There was a sudden division in the room between those who were too young to understand the war‚ and who were shocked by Spence’s story, and those for whom his words were an extreme version of a familiar sadness. ‘What you did was very brave and very merciful,’ Hitchcock said quietly.

‘Perhaps, but I wonder how many weren’t so lucky? He can’t have been the only poor bastard we buried alive. You didn’t serve in the war, did you, Hitch?’

‘No. I was excused on medical grounds.’

‘He enlisted in the volunteer corps of the Royal Engineers,’ Alma added protectively.

Spence held up his hand. ‘I’m not questioning your courage or your loyalty. I’m only saying that when you talk about fear, when you show death on screen, it’s just a game – like the one you’re playing now.’

‘Would you be happier if we did it for real?’ Franks asked.

Spence ignored him. ‘But I’ll go along with it, and those are my answers: I’m afraid of dying, and I’m afraid of killing. I have nightmares about both.’ He stood up and looked at Franks. ‘And I’m not joking.’

This time, he left the room without any opposition. ‘Well, who’s still to go?’ Bella asked, unnerving Josephine by looking directly at her.

‘We’re just observers,’ Archie said diplomatically. ‘And it’s time we were going.’

‘Just a second, Chief Inspector,’ Hitchcock said, and his emphasis on the rank drew one or two surprised glances from his guests. ‘Won’t you stay until the game is over? I think Bella may be about to deliver the sort of exit line we all love her for.’

The actress didn’t disappoint him. She stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette and walked to the door. ‘I’ve always thought that there can be nothing worse than to know the manner of your own death,’ she said, choosing her words with impeccable timing. ‘And now I know that to be true.’

‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Ronnie asked when they were safely back in the restaurant. ‘Next time, remind me to stick with Marta. She’s got more sense than the rest of us put together.’

‘I wonder what Bella Hutton meant?’ Lettice asked.

‘Perhaps she’s ill,’ Lydia suggested. ‘Although if that’s a typical Hollywood evening, anything terminal would be a blessed relief.’

‘Have you gone off the idea, then?’

Lydia looked at Josephine‚ and a guilty smile flickered across her lips. ‘Let’s just say I’ll scuttle back to my dressing room at the Adelphi with a new-found humility. More drinks, everybody?’

Ronnie and Lettice followed her enthusiastically to the bar‚ and Josephine lingered behind with Archie to watch the band, whose first set was just drawing to a close with a subtle rendering of an Ivor Novello song. ‘Isn’t that the waitress who was on duty this afternoon?’ Josephine asked, pointing to the singer.

Archie looked more closely. ‘Yes, I think so. Amazing what lipstick and a posh frock can do for a girl.’

‘Posh-ish,’ Josephine corrected him ungraciously. ‘And not so much of the girl. She won’t see twenty again.’ She ignored a look which had the word forty in it, and was forced to admit‚ ‘Actually, she’s very good.’

‘Why do you say that so grudgingly?’ Archie asked, laughing.

‘Oh, you can just tell she’s a little madam. I was watching her earlier, when she was serving tea to the table next to ours. It’s all in the colour of her eyes: exactly the same as the girl who works in the shop for my father. I’ve never known that shade of blue to mean anything but trouble.’

The waitress-turned-singer took her applause and left the small stage. She made her way across the dance floor to where Hitchcock and Alma were talking, and lingered by the director, waiting for a chance to introduce herself. Without looking at her, he held out his empty glass so that she had no choice but to take it. Mortified, the girl flushed and left the room‚ and Archie noticed some of the waiting staff snigger. ‘Nothing like being brought down to earth with a bump, is there? Do you want another drink?’

‘Only if you’re having one.’ She glanced round the room. Mercifully, there was no one she recognised; except for Alma and the director himself, Hitchcock’s party seemed to have other plans.

‘Why don’t you go and find her?’

She looked embarrassed. ‘Am I that transparent?’

‘I’m afraid so, but probably only to me. I’m going to get changed and have that drink with Bridget. If we leave together now, they’ll think we’re going for a walk.’

‘Are you offering me an alibi, Chief Inspector?’

‘Yes, but only if you’ll do the same. I can live without any more words of wisdom from Ronnie.’ He looked across to where the Motleys and Lydia were already deep in conversation with another couple. ‘I don’t think we’re going to be greatly missed. Is there
anybody
those three don’t know?’

‘I doubt it. Not in a place like this.’ They went over to make their excuses and were just leaving when Lydia caught Josephine’s arm. ‘Do me a favour while you’re out, darling. Pop in on Marta and make sure she’s all right.’