At Death's Door (5 page)

“No, no.”

“There's another thing. There's been a battle royal between my father and Myra Mason before. Twenty-odd
years ago. Fought in the tabloid press and elsewhere. Most people in the literary and journalistic world have a fair idea of his present condition. It could look as if we're reviving that old war and using his natural daughter to do it. . . . Oh, dear, I'm still sounding like Pontius Pilate, aren't I? What I'm really trying to say is that I find the whole project repulsive.”

Pat thought long, in his manner. “Yes, I can understand that. But in fact it's a little more complex than you realize.”

“You mean she was exaggerating her feeling about her mother?”

“No, not that. She had a terrible childhood—neglected, abused, even physically maltreated. That's her story, if she wants to tell it to you. I know it's true, because I know Cordelia doesn't lie. But there's another side: She does admire her mother tremendously as an actress. It was something that she clung tight to all through her childhood: She does this to me, but it's part of the process of being a great star. She's seen everything her mother's been in since she was six, and she has a tremendous archive of reviews. She also has a host of backstage memories, and she's interviewed people she's acted with. That part of the book is almost finished. I've read it. It's brilliant. There's an account of Myra's Rebecca West, for example, that's uncanny. It brings it totally to life, so that you feel you've seen it, yet Cordelia was only thirteen when Myra did
Rosmersholm.
That part of the book could be published on its own, and it's pure admiration, almost hero worship.”

“I see . . . But in the other part it's to be no holds barred?”

Pat shrugged. “There's no reason for her to pull her punches. Myra is a monster, and Cordelia's been the main victim.”

“But isn't she worried the publisher will simply reject it?”

Pat smiled. “Not really. Of course, Cordelia will be willing to negotiate, go into a huddle with the lawyers and so on. But if they find it just too hot to handle, then the part on Myra's stage career can be published, lavishly illustrated. High-class fan stuff. If they put a veto on the other part, Cordelia's going to lodge it with her bank. Her mother will know that as soon as she dies this account of her personal life will be published. That, in a way, will be almost better—a revenge, but a long-drawn-out one, hanging over Myra for the rest of her life. I suppose you think that sounds quite disgusting?”

“Yes, I do rather,” said Roderick unhesitatingly. “Revenge is never a pretty thing.”

“But sometimes it's necessary. You can't imagine what Cordelia was like when we first met. A nervous, listless wreck, unsure of herself, unable to relate to other people. Myra did that. Deliberately, over the years, Myra did it. Since Cordelia was an adolescent, Myra has made it her great mission to demolish any confidence she might feel in herself and her own abilities. Anything she tried to do was ridiculed, any qualities she has were rubbished. That's why this book is necessary. Cordelia has got to write it and then get on with a life, a career of her own. She's got to write Myra out of her life.”

Pat had become most eloquent. Roderick sat thinking.

“I suppose that makes a sort of sense,” he said at last with a sigh. “We all have to get our parents out of our systems somehow. My father was a sexual pirate who made occasional visits to the family circle. I'm an obsessively faithful husband, a devoted family man. Caroline's father was a bit of a crook; he had a multitude of business enterprises, and he sailed all of them on to the windy side of the law. Caroline is a slave to duty, endlessly sifting the moral implications of what she does. I suppose some such process is operating with Myra and Cordelia. Not knowing
Myra well, I can't precisely puzzle it out, but I take your word for it that she's given Cordelia good cause. You know her, and you've seen the consequences in Cordelia.”

“Actually I don't know her,” said Pat.

“Don't know her? Then you don't think—?”

“That Cordelia may be exaggerating? No. Everything I've heard in the village, everything I've heard when Cordelia is talking to Myra's fellow actors, bears out what she says. She must be one of the most hated people in the theater, and that's saying something. I may say the reason I haven't met Myra is that she made it clear to Cordelia and anyone else who would listen that she had no intention of bestowing any notice on some scrubby little down-at-heel schoolteacher that her daughter had the bad taste to take up with.”

“Did she actually say that to Cordelia?”

“She did. And remember, Cordelia may have grown up a bit twisted—with that upbringing that was inevitable. But she is totally truthful. If she says a thing has happened, it has happened. She knows her mother as no one else does, because she knows what she's
done.
She's had it done to
her
.”

Pat had been unusually communicative, even eloquent. Now he lapsed into his characteristic silence. By common consent they got up and began the walk back to the Old Rectory.

Roderick and Caroline agreed it was time to let the topic of the biography be. There was nothing they could do, certainly not for the moment. Soon Cordelia would be finished with the material at the Rectory, and she and Pat would move on. Roderick and Caroline relaxed and enjoyed having the young people around. As they got closer, Roderick seemed to regard Cordelia more as a daughter than as a sister—a daughter for whom he no longer needed to feel any responsibility. One evening they went, all three,
down to the tent and sat around on the lawn eating a supper of sausages and beans (they had no positive evidence that Cordelia and Pat ever ate anything else) and drinking red wine. There was lots of laughter. Pat played the mouth organ, which enchanted Becky. Cordelia told some backstage stories, and since she chose them carefully and they reflected no discredit on her mother, they could be enjoyed without embarrassment. Becky was so in love with the fading light, the two young people, and the uproarious cheerfulness that she was allowed to stay up well beyond her normal bedtime. It was nearly ten o'clock when they made for the house, and Caroline went straight up to check on the invalid and to put Becky to bed.

It was while she was upstairs that the phone rang.

“Maudsley 7536,” said Roderick.

“Mr. Cotterel? Roderick Cotterel?”

He knew the voice. Surely he knew the voice. But it was the voice of none of their friends.

“Speaking.”

“You may not remember me, but we met a long time ago. I'm Myra Mason.”

She did not say Dame Myra Mason. The tone of voice said dame. Roderick smiled at the fiction that he might not remember her.

“I remember you very well indeed, of course,” he said, making his voice as cordial as possible.

“Happier times,” said the rich, velvet voice. It was a voice that changed moods and attitudes very quickly. Now it was in the mood reminiscent. “You were even younger than me, I remember. I expect you were quite shocked at the situation.”

“I had ceased being shocked by anything my father did before I was into my teens,” said Roderick. “Though I was sometimes embarrassed.”

He was at once conscious of having committed a species of disloyalty and of having been led into it. Probably Myra was good at that.

“People tell me that the old man is—I don't quite know how to put it—”

“Senile. Yes, I'm afraid so.”

The voice had acquired new undertones, this time of concern and compassion.

“It must be a terrible burden for you—and your wife. Sad, too. Because, whatever else one might say, he had a fine mind. . . . Time to let bygones be bygones, I think.”

“Oh, I think the time for recriminations is long gone by,” said Roderick. Though personally he doubted if it was for Myra.

“Yes . . . You're probably wondering why I'm ringing you after all this time. The fact is, my daughter and her boyfriend have taken off on a camping holiday, and I heard in the pub here tonight that someone had had a postcard from them, from Sussex. I wondered if by any chance they'd come to see you.”

“Yes, they're staying here.”

“They're
staying
with you?”

“They're camping in the garden.”

“I
thought
she might . . . Silly, silly girl. She's always been so taken up with her father.
So
idiotic.”

“Do you think so? It seems perfectly natural to me. Especially when her father was a famous writer.”

“It can only end in tears. I've always told her so. And particularly when . . . when he's in the condition he is in.”

“My wife tells me she's seen him. I don't think it particularly upset her.”

“But what's the point? And how do you think
I
feel, having all that old business raked over again?”

It was the first time a genuine note had intruded into the vocal performance—a note of rich self-pity. Roderick decided to be direct.

“Forgive me, Dame Myra, but I had the impression at the time that both you and my father rather relished the fight.”

“Did you?
Did
you? . . . Well, we won't go over that again. I'm glad the silly pair are safe. They're so
young
. . . . One worries. . . . Has Cordelia, I wonder, asked a lot about your father and me? About the affair?”

“Well, yes—”

“She hasn't asked to see papers, has she? Letters?”

The steel in her voice made Roderick feel absolutely miserable, like a peccant schoolboy.

“She has, yes.”

“I hope you showed her nothing. What reason did she give?”

“There has been talk of a biography of you—”

“Complete nonsense.”

“. . . of a
book,
anyway.”

“There will be no book. Do I gather that you've shown her things?”

“Well, yes. He is her father, after all.”

“What has that got to do with anything? This book is about me. . . .” The tone of voice changed abruptly. “Oh, I realize I haven't been the perfect mother. What stage person has been? We are notoriously bad parents. We can't give them the
stability,
and children are so very conservative. . . . Though really, when I come to think about it, little Miss Cordelia wasn't so badly done by. At least I never sent her away, always had her with me. She had a
home
—a lot of stage children have nothing but a prop basket. . . . When I
think
of the Broadway offers, the Hollywood offers, I've turned down. No, I said, I have a child, and I can't disrupt her home life and her education.
Over and over, I had to turn them down. It's the reason my career has never really taken off in the States. And now she does this. . . .”

“Maybe this is just a temporary estrangement,” began Roderick.

“Maybe. The silly goose has been made to see reason in the past. Only now she has that long streak of a school-teacher to egg her on. I think I'm going to have to—”

Myra stopped. For a few seconds Roderick heard breathing, then there was a click. He did not think they had been cut off.

He stood thinking for a moment. What was it Myra thought she was going to have to do? Come down to Maudsley? If so, then the children—as he thought of them—ought to be warned. He realized he had now gone over to their side. He went into the garden, but as he walked toward the tent, he heard the sounds of lovemaking. He turned back and locked the door behind him. There would be time enough in the morning.

R
ODERICK WENT DOWN
to tell them early next morning. They were sitting outside their tent, eating eggs and bacon and fried bread cooked on their Primus. So they could manage something other than sausages and beans.

“Your mother rang last night,” Roderick said to Cordelia.

“I thought it wouldn't be long,” she said equably. She fiddled nervously with the food on her plate, then looked up at him with one of her dazzling smiles. “I suppose news of one of our postcards has got back to her. Did she throw a rage?”

“No-o,” admitted Roderick. “Though of course she wasn't pleased.”

“Did you tell her I was looking at your father's letters and papers and things?”

“That was what she wasn't pleased about. . . . Before she rang off, she said: ‘I think I'm going to have to—' ”

“What did she mean by that?”

“I rather thought she meant she was going to have to come down here.”

“I think you're right.” She put aside her plate and looked up at him again with a sunny smile. “Great . . . just great. Thank you very much for telling me.”

So Cordelia didn't seem to be worried. Indeed, she seemed to look forward to such a visit with relish. Roderick turned and went back to the house.

Cordelia worked in the little library as usual, but at lunchtime Pat came back, and they ate together on the lawn. Looking out from the kitchen, Roderick saw that Pat had brought a newspaper from the village, and they were poring over it and the AA Book. When Cordelia came back into the house after lunch, she announced:

“We don't think Myra will come down until Sunday. She's in
John Gabriel Borkman
at the National every night until Saturday. Then she has a week off. That's when she'll choose. And we guess she'll stay at the Red Lion. Though it could be the Imperial in Cottingham—it's grander, and Mother likes grandeur. But it's farther away, and we wouldn't be so get-at-able from there, so we think she'll stay in Maudsley.”

It was almost as if Cordelia were planning the visit.

In fact, that evening, in the Red Lion, where she and Pat had become quite well known, Cordelia said to the landlord: “We think my mother may be ringing up to book a room here before long.”