Political Death (4 page)

A certain amount of the Diary was also occupied by the somewhat tedious problems of Nanny, who sounded a real old-fashioned nightmare, with Bad Millie the little show-off and Good Olga the little angel (with occasional black clouds). There were children's parties to which Lady Imogen generally sent the nanny, but at one of these, to which she did actually escort her own children, the Smyth twins featured. "Terribly plain, "was the uncharitable comment, "Just like Tee'. There were also adult social events including Imogen Swain's own dinner parties and outings with other men who courted her. If Lady Imogen was a widow (there was the occasional reference to 'poor Robin'), she was evidently a merry one. And the Diary ended, by chance, two days before the date on which Franklyn Faber vanished.

Otherwise Lady Imogen's absolute physical obsession with Burgo Smyth permeated the Diary. "Cocoa with Bur' (or the lack of it) meant that any day was either 'wonderful' or 'miserable' (sometimes even more strongly 'bloody day). Yet the sheer concentrated focus of her feelings appeared to have lulled Burgo into a sense of false security about his mistress's discretion. Because nothing mattered to her except him, Burgo had trusted Imogen not to betray him. On the evidence before Jemima, he had not been entirely wise to do so. He clearly did not know that Imogen kept a diary.

More than once Lady Imogen had made a note on the subject to herself: "Remember LOCK UP DIARY' and "LOCK THIS UP. No one sees this. Not Bur, definitely not Bur. (And not creepy Nanny either.)'

There had been something between Burgo Smyth and Franklyn Faber which had never come out, either in court or in the press after Faber's disappearance. It was something which could perhaps have ruined Burgo, condemned him, in his own words, to political death. Lady Imogen knew what this was, or at least the outlines of it. The references were fairly constant if elliptical, not deliberately so, but because Imogen Swain herself knew what she meant and saw no need to amplify it. The crucial Diary would of course be the one following and Jemima needed to consult that before she made up her mind about anything.

Rosenkavalierwas turning away from post-coital sadness to the light-hearted mission of the young Oktavian, bearing a rose. The Chardonnay was not only seriously depleted, but getting warm. Time for a long, long bath, the greatest pleasure currently available to her. She would then play the video of her programme on the Faber Secrets Case, accompanied by the remnant of smoked salmon she had, thank heaven, spied at the back of the fridge.

In the event Jemima read the new Barbara Vine in her bath till even the fourth lot of hot water had grown cold. She ate the smoked salmon and finished off the Chardonnay, rechilled with lumps of ice, among the many lacy white pillows of her huge low bed. The rich foxy smell of the lilies was perhaps responsible for dreams in which someone called Ned Silver but looking like Franklyn Faber came calling on her in the middle of the night.

"Why have you changed?" asked Jemima.

"After thirty years, we've all changed," was the reply which even in her dreams struck Jemima as odd, although she could not precisely understand why. Then Ned-as-Franklyn leant towards her.

She was awakened by a terrible screaming sound, a cry, someone was being killed outside her door ... Moments later Jemima realised it was her new personal fax machine which Cherry had insisted on having installed as a business necessity for JS Productions. ("So we're always in touch'.) But it was not Cherry who was keeping in touch so early in the morning. Groggily, but very happily, Jemima read an amorous message from Ned which must have scorched the hotel paper when it was written. In the early sixties Burgo Smyth had sent his love letters overnight by the late post from the House of Commons. There were references to them in the Diary: "Letter from Bur: oh, bliss'. In the nineties Ned Silver faxed his love letters on the crested writing paper of a foreign hotel.

After a while, still keeping the fax like a talisman in her robe pocket, Jemima made a mug of coffee. To bring herself to life, she turned on breakfast TV but without the sound. She was still gazing at the set unfocusedly when a picture of someone dressed as Titania at a fancy dress ball filled the screen.

"My God, its her. Lady Imogen Swain. As she was. Beautiful' Jemima's reactions sharpened. Why on earth... By the time she had enlarged the sound, she heard only the words 'in Hippodrome Square, West London'. The image of Titania vanished.

Jemima switched channels. This time she got a picture of Hippodrome Square itself, an ambulance, and something body-shaped being carried into it, which looked very dead indeed, under a black cloth, no face visible. Jemima found she was shaking and her coffee began to spill. In front of her, the small blue Diary with the initials I.M.S. was spattered with drops.

Anger and Fear

Millie Swain was crying. She knew they were not pretty tears. Even now, in spite of what had happened, she was filled with rage and disgust at Madre, rage and disgust against herself. She was also frightened.

Millie had turned away to the window of her dressing-room in the Irving, although there was no view, just thick glass edged by thin flowered cotton curtains and nothing beyond. But Millie had to conceal from Randall Birley, standing awkwardly at the door, the truth about her emotions. The rage and disgust were too raw and could not be admitted at this point. As to the fear, that might be wrongly ascribed to first night nerves: pride forbade Millie to show more than a conventional apprehension.

Randall came and put an arm around her shoulder. Normally his slightest touch gave Millie a charge; now she felt nothing.

T hate her," she was thinking, "Madre is dead and it makes no difference. I still hate her. I always thought I would be free..."

"Darling, she would be very proud of you' It was not the right thing to say.

"Madre? So proud that she went and killed herself just before my first night?"

Randall Birley tightened the arm. "Darling Mill, you've had a horrible, horrible shock, and by the way fuck the first night. Audience, critics, the lot of them. You're going to be terrific. You are terrific'

Millie turned to him and saw them together reflected in the long mirror. She noticed that Randall had composed himself into an elegant picture of masculine consolation. In her velvet suit and flared trousers, she herself had the air of a Renaissance boy being comforted by his patron, rather than a late-twentieth-century woman in the arms of her lover.

Suddenly an unbidden image from childhood came to her: her mother, so tiny and feminine, weeping in the arms of a man. It must have been Burgo Smyth; who else would have had Madre in his arms? What scene had she, Millie, interrupted? Had it been a farewell? Or just a common or garden scene? Even as a child, Millie had understood that her mother had a capacity for making scenes. Where on earth did that memory come from? It must have been jolted and stirred from the depths where it had lain for years, by the hideous events of the last twenty-four hours. She put the strange image away from her. Then for the first time it occurred to Millie that Randall, with his height and rugged dark looks resembled Burgo Smyth as she had once known him. Well, it was proverbial that actors and politicians had a lot in common.

"She jumped," said Millie abruptly. "Madre jumped. She went up to the top of the house some time after we left.

And jumped from the old nursery balcony." She added: "Madre was terrified of heights. And the dark. She hated the nursery and she hated the cellar. She never went into the nursery and she had the cellar shut up."

Then Millie started to cry in earnest against the gloriously ruffled shirt which Randall wore with his black velvet dinner jacket. "They found her lying in the square. Madre's last night, my first night, in that order. A dramatic last exit, Olga called it. But then you know what Olga thinks about the theatre." The last was said half laughing, wholly crying. "Dramatic is not a term of praise with my sister Olga. Nor my brother-in-law Holy Harry."

Millie could see Olga's card on a modest bouquet of pink garnet roses among the first-night flowers on her dressing-table. It read (in a florist's handwriting): "Good luck tonight. Olga and Harry Carter-Fox'. But Olga knew perfectly well the theatrical superstition by which you did not use the words 'good luck' in advance, since Millie had often explained it to her. So maybe Olga had brought the bad luck... If so, Millie had to admit that it was bad luck on Olga too. And on Holy Harry.

"My poor Harry! On the eve of this very tricky election!" Olga's expressed reaction had been quite as un filial as Millie's. She had even gone further and muttered something about having to cope as usual while Millie enjoyed the applause on stage. Both sisters understood (if Harry did not) that beneath such comments lay not only a deep shared anger at Madre's last exit, but a deep shared guilt. And then there was the fear, which they also shared, about what had happened the night before.

Images. Madre's hysterical weeping. Her screams turning to little animal-like cries as she staggered round the filthy decaying drawing-room on her high heels. At one point she trod on one of those monstrous creepy cats and the animal's protests had joined her own. Whenever Madre said any words that could be understood, they amounted to the same message: "No, no, I won't go. This is my house. Burgo's going to come here and fetch me. He knows where to find me. So I won't go. Burgo loves me. He's going to come back." And so on, as the sisters exchanged glances which were both furious and desperate.

It was Olga who got hold of the pile of Diaries and letter, half in and half out of a Safeways bag under her mother's chair.

"At least we're taking these away, Madre. Right now," she said firmly; it was the voice of a Tory MP's wife dealing with a constituent. "We've had quite enough of that." Curiously enough, Olga's dive towards the bag had the effect of calming Lady Imogen, or at least restoring her to some sense of the present.

"You can't take them. There's no point. I gave them to someone. I gave them away already. Didn't I?" Their mother now sounded more confused than hysterical.

"What on earth are you talking about, Madre?" rapped out Millie, too sharply.

Olga signed to her. "Millie, I know how to deal with this," she said quietly. Once again there was that sisterly sub-text, "Since I always do deal with it."

"Who came, Madre?" Olga went on. "Everything's here. We'll look after everything for you, won't we, Millie? These boring old letters and things are just a worry for you."

"That nice girl on television with the pretty-coloured hair. She took it all away and the letters."

Olga Carter-Fox raised her eyebrows over her mother's head. Millie responded with a grimace.

"Look, everything is here, Madre," Olga at her most reasonable and gentle 'all in this funny bag." Olga caught sight of a letter on House of Commons writing paper. For a moment she thought it must be from Harry... then she realised her mistake and frowned. At the same time Imogen Swain snatched at the bulging bag.

"You can't have that. Burgo's sending someone to pick it up. I think he's coming himself. Somebody came last night who came?" She began to drift again.

Millie and Olga left the house a little later together. Their mother was now sitting quite docilely in the drawing-room, her small figure almost extinguished by the two cats which had settled on top of her. Her last audible words, called after them in that little breathless voice, were: "You must find me somewhere where my girls can be happy." It never failed to irritate both Olga and Millie that their mother used the term 'my girls' for the creatures they referred to as 'those bloody cats'. But at least Madre seemed to be reconciled to moving.

"And about time too," muttered Olga when Millie pointed this out. "You don't even know about the hairdresser incident the other day! Madre turned up for an appointment at Luciano's in Curzon Street. Apparently he used to do everyone's hair in the fifties. Only the trouble is that everyone's dead, including Luciano. The salon is now a casino. Actually they were extremely sweet as Madre loudly demanded to have her hair washed for an important lunch date amid the debris of late night gambling."

They were in the darkened hall. The lights of the chandelier above their heads had fused long ago and Madre,

with her ridiculous persecution mania, "They're going to kill me', and so forth and so on, had persistently refused to have an electrician in the house unless Olga could find her a female one. This, Olga, with a deep sigh, had put on her list of Things to Do for Madre (T.D.M. as Harry called it). Olga was scrabbling for the key Madre generally kept in a broken Chinese bowl on the hall table. She could not find it. Olga opened the door to the dining-room and put on a light: it was a room unused for years and would, thought Olga, have conveniently done as a dining-room for Miss Havisham. The shaft of light revealed that the bowl, which seemed to have lost yet another piece, was actually empty.

"I thought I saw that key when I came in' "Well, we've still got one key, you take it," said Millie. "And listen to me, Olga, it's not our fault. Will you say that to yourself five times before you go to sleep? Take the Holy One's mind off the election with your mutterings." "Harry says that to me five times a night already." Olga shuddered as she tried to rub some of the dust from the table off her fingers; something or other had also marked her beige skirt; how typically brilliant of Millie to have worn jeans! "What were we to do? He keeps saying that to me. Put her in a home by force, for Christ's sake? Well, I did once check up" on the procedure, or rather Harry's secretary did, and frankly Millie, it's not that easy. If the patient doesn't agree it can be quite ugly. Look at tonight's little canter. Harry has to think about his image our position. If only she'd agreed to have someone to live with her! Plenty of room, to put it mildly. She or they could have lived upstairs and just kept an eye... that sweet little Filipino, three months arranging for it all, and then she was sent packing in three minutes."

"Olga, listen to me," Millie turned fiercely to her sister on the doorstep, and spoke with great emphasis. "We're just not guilty. She's the guilty one, not us. And lingering on like a dotty, malevolent ghost in that great big house, not selling it, that's what's wrong. That's what's driven her off her rocker. She could have sold it and given us some money years ago' The wind raised Millie's thick black hair as she glared at Olga.

"That's what Harry says," said Olga automatically. "Look out, don't let that cat out. It's just about to pour with rain."

"He is not right about his politics but Holy Harry is right about that. Damn her! Damn her to hell! And her cats!" But Millie gently guided the huge soft furry animal back inside the door. "Do you remember when this house was full of flowers?" she added irrelevantly. "What were those flowers that looked so drab and smelled delicious? Tuberoses. Whenever I smell that smell..."

"The drawing-room may have been stuffed with tuberoses once upon a time, I suppose he sent them, but I don't remember many flowers up in the nursery." Then Olga patted Millie's arm; the habit of peace-keeping was too strong in her to be resisted. "You take the dreaded bag, Millie. At least that stuff is waterproof. I don't want Harry to see it and be driven up the wall."

"I'll dash back and lock it up in the theatre. I don't want Randall to see it either."

"Millie," asked Olga slightly timidly, 'is he..."

"Yes, absolutely gorgeous. Eat your heart out, sister." Millie Swain strode off into the shadows of Hippodrome Square as the wind began to toss the tops of the big trees. She was swinging the Safeways bag so energetically that Olga was left wondering fearfully if its contents might spill.

For Millie now, thinking back, none of this made for happy recollection (except perhaps her eventual return to Randall's Fulham Road flat). And the prospect of the police tomorrow morning was not a particularly cheerful prospect either. Since Millie had spent the night with Randall, she had not been contact able by the police. It was so far Olga who had dealt with them although Harry had nobly offered to identify the body officially, thus justifying his reputation for holiness.

But for now, thank God, it was time to work. And it was true that during the next two hours odd, Millie Swain hardly thought about her mother's death or her own guilt or her own fear; even moments of that troubling anger did not come to disturb her.

"Oblivion, perhaps that's why I became an actress..." The thought floated by, "Not just to show off as that horrible Nanny Forrester used to say." Her Viola was maybe just a little more intense than it had been at the Addison. "Swain's deliciously provocative air of relaxation', as the Guardian had put it, might have gone missing. ("I predict many swains for Swain' Daily Mail] But the first night notoriously did not produce the most relaxed performance.

No, Millie remained curiously and happily cut off in her capsule of Illyria, that is, until she went to Randall's dressing-room some twenty minutes after the curtain fell. They had exchanged a brief kiss on stage and some members of the audience had clapped. But why not? Randall also kissed his slightly elderly Olivia and his extremely juvenile Maria; he was after all the director as well as the star. But for obvious reasons, Millie had no family to visit her after the show; apart from Kevin Connelly, her agent, and Max Marmont, the producer, with his silent, smiling Japanese wife, there seemed to be a tacit conspiracy to leave her alone with what was presumed to be her grief. It was Randall who telephoned her from his dressing-room at his most expansive: "Darling, come and have a glass of champagne, meet everybody."

After Millie had pulled on her jeans she seemed to have lived in them for the last twenty-four hours she looked desperately for something appropriate to go with them to face the bright world of Randall's dressing-room. It pleased her sense of irony to find a black silk shirt, actually one of his. It could be said to provide a mourning touch... or even mourning chic if she decided, defiantly, to go to the first-night party.

This mood of detachment came to an end abruptly with the introductions in Randall's dressing-room. There was indeed a crowd, most of whom Millie recognised: Randall's agent Betsy Wright, for example, a tiny woman in her fifties who nevertheless managed to give Millie a hug which almost knocked her off her feet, "Ooh, darling, what they do to us. But you were of course magnificent, deeper, rounder, darker, not too dark of course, in a way also lighter..." Betsy Wright babbled on kindly.

But, "You don't recognise me, Millie," said the next person she encountered, a blonde young woman in a plain black velvet suit, high-necked white blouse and small pearl earrings. Unlike most of the people in the room who were drinking champagne, she had a glass of Perrier in her hands. The face was vaguely familiar. Or perhaps the blonde woman's poise, the artfully plain perfect hairstyle, simply reminded Millie of the sort of career woman who was photographed giving interviews to the newspapers.