He said: ‘If you want to go in, I guess we might do it without embarrassing Mrs van Costa too much. I met the Mission when Janey brought them round to the gallery, and they invited me to take a glass of wine with them afterwards. That is, if we’re not too informally dressed.’ Gil was wearing a loose silk shirt hand-woven in Siam over beautiful trousers, and I had on my polythene. Austin wasn’t looking at me.
‘Come on,’ said Gil.
Mrs van Costa had brought her own butler. He opened the door in a white jacket, American as a Yellow Cab driver and about as generally welcoming. We asked after Coco and were taken sourly into a large study lined with stamped Cordoban leather and the finest collection of banned books I’ve ever seen outside St Tizzy’s, all bound in morocco. Gilmore and I took one each and sat down and got on with it while Austin, who had more inhibitions, prowled round inspecting the bric-a-brac. He came back grinning and mentioned that there were more brics than bracs. Then Coco came in, formally dressed, with his long golden sideburns glittering and his face full of early warning signals, and said that Mrs van Costa had heard we had arrived and would we care to join her in the drawing room. The butler was just behind him.
We trooped upstairs, Coco staring at Gilmore. I heard him hiss, dramatically: ‘What the hell are you playing at? You’re too bloody early!’ but I didn’t hear what Gilmore replied. My polythene crackled.
The TV soap-opera star’s drawing room was done in Hollywood Regency, with a fibreglass Adam chimneypiece and Venetian chandeliers and crimson satin Knole suites. The floor was parquet, with a carpet made of a whole flock of goats sewn together: the air had that strong, randy smell billy goats have. The Russian Trade Mission sat dotted about, drinking vodka.
I had seen them before, of course, at Mr Lloyd’s luncheon. They still looked burly, sweaty and amiable, sitting in their neat cloth suits, grinning at Mrs van Costa.
Mrs van Costa was sitting in one of the armchairs with her legs up on a pouffe, her face without makeup, her short, grey hair sculpture-cut by Mr Kenneth – who else – and wearing a high-necked, navy crepe trouser suit with a long chiffon scarf that showed every elegant bone in her long, angular body. She was smoking a cheroot in a long ebony holder.
It was Mummy.
I think I mentioned she was an actress. There was the polythene peep-dress, of course, and then I had my hair all done up in loops and plaited through with ribbon, with three Littlewoods’ Asian hairpieces added in for good measure. My face was the last thing she looked at.
Even then, she only swung her feet down from the stool, and getting up said: ‘What a pretty little girl. I don’t think we’ve met before. Coco, introduce us.’
Her neck was stringy and her features were bony, and she hadn’t the pink hair any longer, but she still had the huge saucer eyes I remembered, with false eyelashes and then spikes drawn in under the lashes. She wore no other paint. I had the passing thought that Janey would find her common, and then I thought Janey probably wouldn’t. Whatever else she hadn’t got, Mummy had always had style. I walked forward, and I could read her expression as if she had spoken.
‘I’m sorry, honey. But we can’t let it be known that poor old Forsey’s wife and her boyfriend were living only a stone’s throw from where he was killed.’ I wondered if Coco knew, and then I saw his face and realised why I’d been brought here, and why the whining back there on the stairs hadn’t seemed to ring true. And just who the mystery woman was with whom Daddy had had his assignation that Saturday night.
I said something, I suppose, and sat down with my knees trembling while the general chitchat began. The Russian who had sat down beside me was asking me in a smiling way what I thought of Ibiza and how I liked swinging London. I must have answered him, because he kept getting nearer, but my brain was pinking like the old Morris.
Whether Daddy had come to the Lloyds’ by sheer chance or whether he had followed Mummy to Ibiza, there was no way of knowing. What did seem certain was that somehow they had come together. And that they had been meeting each other here, in secrecy, or at any rate without it being known they were husband and wife. Except, it was apparent, by Coco.
When had he found out? Recently, I suspected. Or perhaps his jealousy hadn’t become sufficient earlier to make it worth his while telling the police. Or maybe he didn’t give a hoot either way until Mummy showed signs of finding him tedious, and he thought he’d take his revenge by springing her secret on me.
In any case, that let Derek out. No doubt Coco’s silence would have to be bought off by somebody, but for Mummy’s sake, not Derek’s. And I didn’t give a damn about Mummy.
The trade attaché moved a bit nearer and Mummy’s voice said: ‘Coco honey, will you do the honours? There’s something I just must have your little friend look at. Sarah, will you come here with me?’
Voice from the past. Sarah, you know that your father and I are just not too good at getting along? Sarah, there are schools in America just as good as St Tizzy’s. Sarah honey, I’m afraid if I had money to buy you a fur coat, I’d have one myself. I followed her into her bedroom, and she shut the door and said: ‘Hello,’ without moving, with that still, smiling stare that Daddy used to call Bemused Duse.
Then she subsided in front of her mirror, without taking her eyes off my face, and said: ‘How are you, She-she? Are you well? Who’s the act for?’ Her mouth got wider, and she gave a sort of cluck of amusement. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen so much of you since you were about five.’
I said: ‘Why van Costa? Have you married again?’
‘In a month? Poor, darling Forsey,’ said Mummy. ‘It’s my incognito, honey. I’ve had it for ages. Did I give you the most terrible shock?’
I sat on the bed, crackling.
‘Terrible. Did you know I was around?’
‘Of course, darling, but I could hardly step out of character now. I’d even had a cable sent from New York saying I was too ill to go to the poor old thing’s funeral. I don’t know how he died,’ she added quickly and, turning round, took another small black cheroot from a box on her table and started to fit it into her holder. ‘I don’t know why or how or anything. I’m just sorry it happened that way, and I’m going to remember him the way he was, when we first married.’
‘It was just coincidence that you were here when he came?’ I said. ‘Or did he come first?’
‘How old are you, She-she?’ said Mummy. She knows damn well how old I am: she bloody well ought to. She’d got her black cheroot lit. ‘Twenty, yes. And not married and with no regular boyfriend.’ She was silent, smoking, and as I didn’t contradict her, she took the holder out of her mouth and said gently: ‘You organise, honey. You mustn’t organise. Men just don’t like it.’
‘Women don’t like it much, either,’ I said. Somehow, whatever I did, I ended up being insulting to Mummy. ‘Did you meet Daddy before he was found dead? Did he come here?’
She got up and roved around, smoking. Her bottom was little and angular, like a twenty-five-year-old gym mistress we once had. God is bloody unfair. Then: ‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘We talked. We were thinking of living together again.’ She stared at me, smiling. ‘But that’s not why he went off and killed himself, She-she. I don’t know why he did that.’
I said: ‘Derek thinks he was a spy.’
She dropped her holder. I’ve never known her make an unpremeditated move in her life but this was, I swear it, although she merely stood, thoughtfully watching it roll, and said: ‘Don’t move, for God’s sake honey, or your nice dress will melt. Thank you, darling.’ She took it from me and sat down, laying the whole thing back on the table. ‘I didn’t know Derek was so romantically minded. Was this at the funeral?’
‘No, this morning,’ I said. I didn’t know whether my brother had ever heard of Mrs van Costa, or if he had, if he knew who she was. But I wasn’t going to let on I didn’t know
. I added: ‘You remember, he was over here just before Daddy died as well, and saw quite a bit of him.’
She stared at me, and a silence developed again, at least a kind of a silence. The house was no longer as quiet as it had been. I wondered how Coco was managing to entertain the Trade Mission in Mummy’s absence, and it occurred to me that if it were to lose none of its dewy happiness, the Trade Mission ought to be got out of the villa pretty damn quick. But there were one or two things I had to find out first.
Mummy said: ‘So far as I know, Derek doesn’t know that I’m here. I’d rather he didn’t know, really. What has he come back for? I thought his test tubes caught cold if he left them.’
‘I sent for him,’ I said, and then slid it on the line. ‘I thought Derek killed Daddy.’
The stare was enormous. I think she had had an injection as well. ‘And did he?’ Mummy said. She was sitting quite still.
‘I thought Coco knew,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Coco is a traitor to his art,’ said Mummy, beautifully. ‘And will have to be dealt with. Come, She-she.’ And she got up and walked firmly out of the room.
Coco’s was a paper-bag party. They had them in New York in the twenties, and they were just reaching London when I left it that spring. Flo had been to one and her paper bag split, always inefficient. A paper bag is all you wear. On your head.
Not that Coco had mentioned this when inviting Gilmore and Austin and myself to his party. And not, of course, that he had told Mummy, who wasn’t expecting a party at all.
I was running after her as she swept out of the bedroom to tell her, but she had opened the drawing-room door before I could catch her, and then she stopped and just stood. I looked over her shoulder. Coco had disappeared. The four red squares were still there, and so were Austin and Gilmore, and I never saw six men so plastered in the whole of my life. If he had been pouring vodka into them with a siphon since the moment Mummy and I left, he could hardly have got a more positive effect. They were singing. I think it was Auld Lang Syne, but the melodic line was a bit out of the true, and Gil thought he was singing in harmony.
Mummy said: ‘What the hell,’ very slowly, but they didn’t even unwind their arms from each other’s necks. She looked round at me.
‘Coco’s planned a wild party,’ I said. ‘For tonight. We were all supposed to be his first guests. We didn’t know you didn’t know.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Mummy. ‘What kind of party?’
It was then that one of the guests came wandering along the corridor behind us, clearly in search of a loo. It was a girl, in a Heal’s carrier bag, and she had pink sequins everywhere. When she saw Mummy, she stopped rigid, but Mummy just said gently: ‘It’s third on the left, Madeleine,’ and went on smoking. The girl disappeared. Then another door opened and Clement Sainsbury came out, his arms full of vodka. He was fully dressed.
‘Hello, Cassells,’ he said. ‘Mrs van Costa? You have a problem.’
‘This is Clem Sainsbury, Flo Sainsbury’s cousin,’ I said. ‘He’s helping on one of the yachts in Ibiza. He holds the track record for helping.’
‘I hope I’m helping right now,’ said Clem. He seemed anxious to accommodate his language to Mrs van Costa’s. ‘There’s a rather extreme sort of . . .’
‘We know all about that,’ said my mother. ‘And the slug among the delphiniums. Where is he?’
‘Running the party, down in the playroom. They all came in the side entrance. They’ve got your Spanish dancers as well, I’m afraid, Mrs van Costa.’
‘Good heavens above,’ said my mother. ‘In paper bags?’
‘Not yet. But since the Trade Mission were still on the premises, and it seemed very likely that Mr Fairley would try and involve them . . .’
‘You got them plastered,’ said Mummy. She stared at him, with her eyes very wide, and he blushed down to the neck of his dinner suit. ‘You have the makings,’ she said, ‘of a genius. Put those bottles down. Sarah, ring for Dilling, will you, while I put a disc on the radiogram?’
It was a conga. As soon as the sound came through, on six stereo speakers, my mother laid down her cigarette holder, and snapping her fingers, grabbed a swaying Austin by the hips. I got hold of Gilmore and, shunting, closed him up to Mummy. The Russians, after a little confusion and laughter, tacked on with Clem pushing behind, and clicking and swaying we stamped our way twice round the drawing room to the boom of Latin American hiccoughs, and out the door and down the hall to the shower room. Mummy snaked them right up to the showers and stepped back smartly, pulling me by the arm, and Clem turned the water on full. We closed the door on them quietly.
The butler Dilling was waiting outside in the passage, and Mummy gave him his orders. Then, with Clem on one side and me on the other, she returned and sat down in the drawing room. A moment later, Dilling ushered Coco in.
He was wearing a bathrobe and he was smiling, although his eyes glittered a bit. He said: ‘I’m rather busy, Geraldine sweetheart, but I got the silliest message from Dilling, so I came for a second.’
‘It may have been silly, but I hope it was also quite clear,’ said my mother. ‘If there are going to be nude parties in this house, I prefer to throw them myself. Your main possessions are being packed and should be ready for you in the time it will take you to dress. You will then be driven into Ibiza where you may obtain a room in the hotel. Your flight back to New York will be arranged and paid for by me tomorrow, and the rest of your belongings sent after. As you would say perhaps, Coco,’ she ended with eloquence, ‘poetry is life, but life is not all poetry.’
He was sitting down with his hands in his pockets, and he continued to sit while he called on every form of repulsive imagery in his repertoire to describe the appearance, habits, morals, and cultural pretensions of my mother. Clem started to get up at the beginning, but my mother shook her head and motioned him back. From time to time, Coco spat at him too. ‘Proud of knowing the daughter of the fifth Baron Forsey of bloody Pinner, aren’t you? Now you know what sort of stock she was bred from. An alcoholic goat, alias a penniless sponger, and an old bag who likes sleeping with poets.’ He waved a hand. ‘Meet Geraldine Lady Forsey, Mr Sainsbury.’
Clem was quite scarlet, with his jaw set like the ellipse on a turnip. But at this point he got up, said: ‘I beg your pardon,’ to my mother, and took Coco Fairley by the neck and the seat of his bathrobe. I suppose he must have refereed worse matches. At any rate, he made light work of lifting Coco clean off his feet, which were kicking madly.
Coco screeched: ‘You’ll be sorry. You don’t know what I saw the night the old man was killed!’ and then his voice died away as Clem carried him out of the door and along to his room. Dilling went with them.
I didn’t think it was going to be possible to look at Mummy, but that did it. ‘Killed!’ I repeated, and met her large, open eyes.
After a bit: ‘Don’t rely on it,’ she said. ‘He was trying to bargain. I doubt if he knows anything about Forsey’s movements.’ She always called him that, never Eric.
I said: ‘If he does, won’t he make trouble?’
‘Not if he wants me to publish his poems,’ said Mummy. ‘And on reflection, he will.’
‘You’ll have to find a publisher first,’ I said cattily. What I had seen of the stuff in the garden hadn’t impressed me overmuch.
‘No, honey. A cement mixer,’ said my mother. ‘That’s easy. It’s only the postage that’s killing.’ She got up, and I could feel her looking me over. ‘You came out of that real well, She-she. You’re tough. You’re nearly as tough as I am. Maybe that’s a good thing.’ Then she took my arm. ‘Come along. Let’s put on a towel and join the real sophisticated people downstairs.’
I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. We walked downstairs to that playroom with barely a stitch on but a white Turkish towel wrapp
ed Mother Hubbard-like under the arms. With her good legs and flat shoulders, Mummy looked incredibly elegant, but my hair was still up in loops and I felt like a sugar in search of its Daddy. Not, you understand, that I wasn’t bursting to get down below.
Coco must have hired a small group from Palma, no doubt at Mummy’s expense, and there was a general impression from the noise that a turntable must be going as well. Apart from the music, the shrieking was quite something, enough to tell you that Coco must have imported pretty well all the playmates who have their reasons for lounging around the Mediterranean in the springtime: society, cafe society, artists, athletes, flower-people and shady expatriates, to choose a few types from Janey’s circle at random. I must say I slowed down a bit as we got near to the playroom door, but Mummy just steamed on like a Monorail in a Harrington square, and I followed, right up to the playroom. Without hesitation, Mummy flung the doors open.
It was like a testing shed for jet engines. The sound came out of a reeling, light-spattered darkness made by dozens of revolving glass lights hung all over the ceiling, which threw heaving, sequin-shaped splashes over the dancers, who were going up and down like ships’ pistons. There was a group at one end dressed in boots, white tights, and ponchos, and a lot of sharp shouts and Castanet clacking and rolling of r’s at the other end from a small party of three Spanish dancers and a guitarist who were deep in a performance. The Spanish women wore high combs and skin-tight decollete dresses, with loads of frills bouncing along after. It reminded me of the caterpillar on the beach. I noticed that the male Spanish dancer, who also wore frills, was a Chinese.
Everyone else was headless in obscure hoods over which the lights slid in a Hammer-films way. Everyone else was also dressed, as we were, in a natty white towel, fastened under the armpits. No one had seen us come in.
Mother smiling, was fitting another damned cheroot into her holder. I said: ‘How the hell did you pull that one off?’