The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

For
Donald ‘Capability’ Rice,

who
helped me invent Milton Magna

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Lost Art of Keeping
Secrets
would have floundered at the starting post
if not for the following, so grovelling thanks to:

Claire
Paterson, Eric Simonoff, Molly Beckett, Christelle Chamouton and all at Janklow
and Nesbit, Harriet Evans (editor extraordinaire), Catherine Cobain, Georgina
Moore and the brilliant team at Hodder Headline, Paul Gambaccinni, Ray Flight
(who knows his Teds), Joanna Weinberg, Ed Sackville, Tim Rice, my grandmother,
Joan Rice, who helped enormously, my mum, Jane Rice (who is nothing at all like
Talitha), Donald Rice, whose knowledge of the great country houses in this
country is unrivalled, Petrus, Martha and Swift. Bouquets to Sue Paterson for
having the foresight never to throw away her brilliant
‘50s
magazines,
and to Ann Lawlor who actually saw Johnnie Ray at the Palladium. I would also
like to acknowledge Ruby Ferguson as a great inspiration.

She said that we must do
something about the rooms. The walls were all damp and fur had settled on some
parts of the wallpaper. But we just closed the doors and hurried down to the
kitchen where it was warm.

Edna O’Brien,
The Lonely Girl

Chapter
1

THE
GIRL IN THE GREEN COAT

I met Charlotte in London
one afternoon while waiting for a bus. Just look at that sentence! That in
itself is the first extraordinary thing, as I took the bus as rarely as once or
twice a year, and even then it was only for the novelty value of not travelling
in a car or train. It was mid-November 1954, and as cold as I had ever known
London. Too cold to snow, my brother used to say on such days, something that I
had never understood. I was wearing my beautiful old fur-lined coat from
Whiteleys and a pair of Fair Isle gloves that one of Inigo’s friends’ had left
at Magna the weekend before, so was feeling quite well disposed towards the
arctic conditions. There I was, thinking about Johnnie Ray and waiting
patiently with two old ladies, one boy of about fourteen and a young mother and
her baby, when my thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a stick-thin girl
wearing a long, sea-green coat. She was almost as tall as me, which caught my
attention straight away as I am just about six foot with my shoes on. She stood
in front of all of us, and cleared her throat.

‘Anyone
want to share a taxi?’ she demanded. ‘I can’t sit around here all day waiting.’
She spoke loudly and quickly and without a hint of self-consciousness and it
was instantly clear to me that although the girl was addressing us all, it was
me she wanted to accept her offer. The fourteen-year-old boy opened his mouth
and closed it again, then blushed and dug his hands into his pockets. One of
the elderly ladies muttered, ‘No, thank you,’ and the other I think must have
been deaf, because her expression remained unaltered by the proposal. The young
mother shook her head with a smile of infinite regret that stayed in my mind’s
eye long after the day had ended. I shrugged.

‘Where
are you going?’ I asked pointlessly.

‘Oh,
you
darling!
Come on.’ The girl darted into the middle of the road and
stuck out a hand to hail a cab. Within seconds one had pulled up beside her.

‘Come
on!’
she cried.

‘Hang
on a second!
Where are you going?’
I demanded for the second time,
thoroughly flustered and wishing that I had never opened my mouth in the first
place.

‘Oh,
for goodness’ sake just jump in!’ she ordered, opening the door of the taxi.
For a few seconds in time the whole world seemed to hesitate under starter’s
orders. Somewhere in a parallel universe, I heard myself shout out that I had
changed my mind and that she must go on alone. Of course, in reality, I leapt
forward and into the cab beside her just as the lights changed and we were off.

‘Yikes!’
she exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d never move!’

She
didn’t turn to speak to me, but faced straight ahead, staring out in the
direction that we were going. I didn’t reply at once, but took in the glory of
her profile — the smooth milky pale skin, the long curling eyelashes and the
thick, thick, straight heavy dark blond hair that fell well below her
shoulders. She looked a little older than me, but I sensed from the way that
she talked that she was probably about a year younger. She sat very still, her
big mouth set in a small smile.

‘Where
are you going?’ I asked again.

‘Is
that all you can say?’

‘I’ll
stop asking it when you give me an answer.

‘I’m
going to Kensington. I’m having tea with Aunt Clare and Harry, which is just
too
impossible for words, so I should like you to come with me, and we’ll have
a lovely afternoon. Oh, and my name’s Charlotte by the way.’

That
was how she said it. Straight Alice in Wonderland. Of course, me being me, I
was flattered by her absurd presumption, first, that I would be happy to
accompany her, and second, that it would be a lovely afternoon if I did.

‘I have
to read through Act Four of
Antony and Cleopatra
by five o’clock,’ I
said, hoping to appear slightly aloof.

‘Oh, it’s
an absolute cinch,’ she said. ‘He dies, she kills herself with an asp.
“Bring
me my robe and my crown, I have immortal longings in me,”‘
she quoted
softly. ‘You have to admire a woman who chooses to end her life with a
snakebite, don’t you? Attention seeking, Aunt Clare would call it. I think it’s
the most
glamorous
way to go.

‘Hard
to do in England,’ I said reasonably. ‘Not many serpents hanging about in west
London.’

‘There
are
plenty
in west London,’ said Charlotte briskly. ‘I had dinner with
one last night.’

I
laughed. ‘Who was that?’

‘My
mother’s latest conquest. He insisted on feeding her forkfuls of shepherd’s pie
as though she were three years old. She wouldn’t stop giggling as though it
were quite the most hilarious thing that had ever happened. I
must
remember
not to dine with her again this year,’ she mused, taking out a notebook and
pencil. ‘What’s more, her new beau was nothing
at all
like he is in the
orchestra pit.’

‘Orchestra
pit?’

‘He’s a
conductor called Michael Hollowman. I suppose you’re going to go all
sophisticated and tell me you know exactly who he is and wasn’t his
interpretation of
Rigoletto
remarkable?’

‘It
was, if a little hurried and lacking in emotion,’ I said.

Charlotte
stared at me and I grinned.

‘I’m
joking,’ I admitted.

‘Thank
goodness for that. I think I would have had to withdraw my invitation right
away if you hadn’t been,’ said Charlotte.

It had
started to rain and the traffic was worsening.

‘Who
are
Aunt Clare and Harry?’ I asked, curiosity winning hands down over
practicalities like the fact that we were travelling in quite the opposite
direction to Paddington. Charlotte sighed.

‘Aunt
Clare is really my mother. I mean, she’s
not
my mother, she’s my mother’s
sister, but my mother has given up on everything in life except for men with
batons who she believes will help further her career. She’s got it into her
head that she’s a great, untrained singer,’ she said grimly.

‘And is
she?’

‘She’s
certainly got the untrained bit right. She’s very neurotic about everything
except for what happens to me, which is rather convenient as we have nothing in
common at all — except for our delusions of grandeur — so I spend most of my
time at Aunt Clare’s and as little time as possible at home.’

‘And
where is home?’ I asked, sounding just like my grandmother.

‘Clapham,’
said Charlotte.

‘Oh.’

She might
as well have said Venus. I had heard of it, but had no idea where Clapham was.

‘Anyway,
Aunt Clare is writing her memoirs at the moment, she went on. ‘I’m helping her.
By that I mean that I’m just listening to her talk and typing what she says.
She’s paying me a pittance because she thinks I should be honoured to have the
job. She says plenty of people would give their eye teeth to hear stories like
hers from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.’

‘I don’t
doubt it,’ I said. ‘And Harry?’

Charlotte
turned to face me. ‘Aunt Clare was married to a very smart man called Samuel
Delancy until three years ago. One of those fearfully good-looking but very
mean types. Anyway, he was killed by a falling bookcase.’

‘No!’

‘Yes,
really, it just collapsed on his head as he sat reading
On The Origin of
Species
— very ironic my mother kept saying — and as a result Aunt Clare
inherited an awful lot of debt and not much else. He was a pretty scary sort of
man with a club foot to boot — ha ha, if you’ll pardon the pun. Harry is their
only son; he’s twenty-five and convinced that the whole world is conspiring
against him. It’s very dull indeed.’

‘I’m
happy to share the taxi with you but I don’t make a habit of having tea with
complete strangers,’ I said unconvincingly.

‘Oh,
good gracious, I’m not asking you to make a habit of it. But do come. Please!
For me!’ Charlotte implored.

Although
that was an absurd reason for me to accompany her as we had only met a few
minute ago, it had the desired effect. There was something in the way that this
creature spoke, something in the way that she carried herself, that made me
quite certain that no one would ever be able to refuse her anything, regardless
of whether they had known her for five minutes or