Suspicious Circumstances (21 page)

Wildly, clutching around for something to cling to, I blurted, ‘But she can’t have been living alone. Someone else must have been there in the back room. Pam. Of course Pam.’

‘Pam?’ echoed M. Renard.

‘You must remember.
Pam et Ses Copains
. The lady with the dog act in the vaudeville show. The lady …’

‘Ah, the vaudeville.
Holà, Hé
.’ Roger Renard’s hand had crawled very slyly to Delight’s arm and was lying along it a crab at rest. ‘While Anny is waiting for M. Picquot to return from Lyon,
Holà Hé,
she must leave for Milano. So Anny abandons her job. One week before they have gone to Milano and there is Anny stranded in Paris alone — except, perhaps, for her husband.’

‘Her husband!’ I exclaimed.

‘But what was that? It was not a real marriage. Perhaps even the husband he had gone too. For it was just a convenance. She explains this to us — to M. Dupont and me, for we have to know. She was a widow from a Czech. The Czechs then, they had been swallowed up by M. Hitler. To be a Czech in Paris was no good any more — no residence rights, no work permits. So for this she had married — for her work permit to be able to live.’

A fake marriage for a work permit? But what conceivably could that have to do with the second marriage as described by Mother? ‘In his own country, dears, he’s a national figure.’ Lies! Just some more of Mother’s unending fabrications.

‘But, Monsieur, who was her husband?’

‘Her husband?’ M. Renard’s head was sinking slowly forward. ‘Ah, who could remember such things, Monsieur? Some little person. Some little acrobat, some tumbler in the vaudeville sans doute. ...’

His head reached his arms, which were straddled across the table. It became buried in them. I looked at him frantically. He started to snore.

‘Nickie!’ That was the first time I’d remembered Delight in minutes. ‘Nickie, wake him up.’

‘What’s the use?’

‘But, Nickie — what did he say? I’m going out of my mind.’

I got up like a drunken corpse. I paid the waiter. I asked if it was all right to leave our friend sleeping and, because it was France, it was all right.

In the taxi going back to the Suarez, I told Delight everything — the vaudeville going to Milan with Pam and everyone, Mother alone ... M. Picquot.

‘But it must have been an accident.’ I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. ‘And Norma. And Sylvia. She couldn’t have done it to Sylvia. We know that. She was with you.’

The taxi joggled along at the pace of a broken-winded cart horse. The lights on all the boats moved in the Vieux Port— M. Lopez' boat, Mrs Fellowes’ boat, Onassis’ boat, Nyarchos’ boat, everybody’s goddammed boats — twinkle-twinkled like little stars. Delight was sitting close against me. Suddenly I realized that her arm was trembling.

‘About Sylvia ... I’ve got to tell you now.’ She turned to me and her face seemed to be swaying like the boats in the harbor. ‘Nickie, I lied.’

‘Lied.’

‘That night in Vegas when you were out there standing in the sand and I came to you — it was your Mother who sent me. ‘Mother!’

‘The moment we got back from the party, she called me into her room. She said you had a mad idea she’d killed Sylvia. She couldn’t bear to think of you suffering, she said. Help me. Dearest Delight, help me for Nickie’s sake. Go to him. Tell him I was with you in your room all that time. And she — she was so pitiful, so desperate that finally I said yes.’

She took my hand and clung on to it fiercely.

‘But it wasn’t true. I have no more idea than you have where she was when Sylvia died.’

We reached the hotel. I paid the taxi. We got up to the suite. I was so drunk by then that all the other things, the horror, the fury, the shock, weren’t operating properly. Nothing was operating except the champagne.

I remember wandering into the living room with Delight behind me. Then there was the sound of a key in the lock and Mother was sweeping into the room, being glamorous and incomparable.

‘Darlings, how naughty we all are. Up at this hour — and off to London tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

It must have been Delight who said that. Dimly I remembered that we weren’t supposed to be leaving for two more days.

‘Yes, darlings, just the three of us. The others don’t have to hurry. Poor Uncle Hans should have a couple of full days in bed to get over his tummy anyway. But I have to be there. My new dress for the act, my dress for Her Majesty. I’ve got to give poor Mr Cavanagh
some
time. So beddy-byes, dears. All up and packed and ready to go by ten-thirty.’

I’d been standing with my back to her, struggling against all the things that were far too much for me. Tomorrow ... London ... Just the three of us? Why Delight and me? Because she was going to keep an eye on us, of course. She was going to make sure we didn’t sneak off on our own and get married in spite of her. Intriguer ... Liar ... Mass-murderess.

I whirled around. Now I would tell her ... what? ... how? ... Where to begin?

‘You!’ That’s what came out of the frenzied confusion inside me. ‘You and Monique — trying to bust it all up. So Delight isn’t good enough to be your daughter-in-law. Oh, no,
she
never married a National Figure. I stand corrected;
she
never married a cheap little vaudevillian to get a work permit and keep from being kicked out of the ...’

‘Nickie.’ Delight’s hand flew up, covering my mouth. ‘Anny, don’t pay any attention to him. He’s drunk. He couldn’t help it. We ran into someone who ...’

‘Someone!’ I yelled through her hand. ‘Not someone. Roger Renard.’

‘Nickie, shut up, I say. Anny, please, you and I can be sensible even if he can’t. I realize you don’t want me to marry Nickie and I don’t blame you. You’ve got every right to think I’m a phony. But, Anny, I could convince you. I’m sure I could ...’

Suddenly the only thing that mattered to me was a bathroom. I pulled myself away from Delight and ran across the living room. I knew I passed Mother. I knew she threw out her hand.

‘Nickie, my poor sweet Nickie ...’

But I ran on into my bedroom and into my bathroom and slammed the door.

I woke up next morning feeling so ghastly that nothing mattered. Let it all go. To hell with it. We got packed. We said good-bye to Uncle Hans in bed with his tummy, to a grinning Gino and to Pam, who, suddenly, because of what I’d been suspecting about her, seemed the person I loved most in the world. Then we were on the plane to London.

Mother and I sat together. I’d tried desperately not to have it happen, but, of course, it had happened. Delight was somewhere else way up ahead and, as I sat there, dead to the world, Mother started being ‘sweet’.

‘Nickie darling, I’m so glad of this little opportunity for a quiet talk. It was wrong of me to send for Monique. Of course it was. I’m a dreadful, bullying Mother and I know it and I don’t seem to be able to help it. But, Nickie dear, I did want to make sure. I mean — nineteen! But I do see now. I really do. If you honestly want to marry Delight, I won’t dream of interfering. But, dear, you must promise me one thing. I’m going to make Delight promise too. Don’t run off to some dreadful little registry office — so sordid and hopelessly against the law, dear, I’m sure, with you being under age. Just wait, darling, until after the Queen, after the Opening, then we’ll have a divine church ceremony. It’s a promise, dear. Cross my heart and hope to die. A divine wedding in a church.’

She went on and on and I couldn’t bear it because I knew she wasn’t meaning a word of it, I knew it was gall and wormwood to her to have to accept Delight, I knew it was only because she loved me and was terrified that if she didn’t go along with it, she’d lose me. Having her love me, having her giving herself away like that, was the thing I could bear the least. It even somehow took the thrill out of Delight. Why? Did I, deep down inside, hate winning out over Mother? Was I as perverse as that?

But this wasn’t a time for thinking. I wasn’t ever going to think again. I just let her yak and yak and yak, being motherly and affectionate and warm, and every now and then, while I stopped French air hostesses pressing interminable meals on me, I went on saying, Yes, Mother. Okay, Mother. Sure, Mother, until finally we got over the Channel and over some place like Kent and were coming down at London Airport.

Forget it, I told myself as Mother dazzled enormously polite customs’ men. Put it all out of your mind. Marry Delight. That’s what you want. Just marry her at a divine church ceremony with Mother being a divine Mother of the Groom with a string of murders to her credit. Carry on, Nickie, old boy. Make like there never was a M. Picquot or a Norma Delanay or a Sylvia La Mann.

We moved into a huge house, belonging, of course, to some admirer, in Kensington. Mother had intended to go to Claridge’s but some King or something was in her suite so, when this offer came up, she grabbed it. Right away the old rat-race began — cables, flowers, telephone calls, Larry, Vivien, Oliver, Cecil. Why did countries bother to have their own celebrities? Why couldn’t they just settle for one all-purpose group like a U.N. force and throw it in wherever it was needed? Mother had a little talk with Delight about the church ceremony. Delight thought it was fine and sensible and, after all, wasn’t Mother wonderful, which appalled me a bit, but not enough for me to make anything out of it. My spirit was crushed.

Most of the first days were Mother and John Cavanagh. Apparently, it isn’t easy to cook up two 'absolutely divine' gowns, one for the Palladium and one for Elizabeth II, in a matter of minutes. Mother had also found some ‘miraculous’ little man who could help Delight with her French pronunciation for the Trenet song — so, unless I wanted to be on my own, I either had to be watching John Cavanagh’s ladies stick pins in Mother’s hems or be listening to Delight being a relentlessly cute American girl singing a French song to a rehearsal piano.

Most of the time I wanted to be on my own. I just walked around London, which I didn’t know too well, but which seemed to be okay except that they never stopped changing the guard. Once they got a good one, why didn’t they stick to it? And then, all over town were placards announcing
ANNY ROOD AND FAMILY AT THE PALLADIUM
and the Command Performance of the movie where Mother was going to meet the Queen. Meet the Queen! What would the Queen do if she knew ? What if I was to write her a letter: 'Dear Queen…?’

One morning, when I was trapped in the middle of Trafalgar Square, which is encircled by buses all thundering in the wrong direction and quite impossible to escape from, I bought a picture postcard of the National Gallery and, out of sheer hatred for everything including myself, wrote ‘Meilleurs Voeux’ on it and sent it to Monique.

I’d lost track of the time, but suddenly it became the day before Mother’s birthday and the Presentation to the Queen. That evening, when I got home from my pointless wanderings, I found Ronnie sitting alone in the living room. I’d forgotten the lovesick St Bernard look which, in the last Hollywood days, had permanently crowded out the old Debonair Distinction. There it still was in all its glory, and Ronnie insisted on giving me the full outpouring. He just had to fly over for Mother’s opening. Would Mother be mad? He just couldn’t bear being separated from her any longer. He hadn’t cast anyone else in Ninon, he was still waiting and hoping … Did I think that possibly, conceivably, there might, just might be a chance that Mother ... Sob, groan.

That went on for hours and then Gino arrived from Cannes loaded with all Mother’s bags which, of course, she’d left for him to cope with. Uncle Hans had stayed behind because his tummy still wasn’t well. He was out of his mind not being
able to get to Mother’s birthday (Who cared?) but, old trooperishly, had decided it was more important to get well for the Palladium. Pam was in England but she too was frenzied at not being able to make Mother’s birthday. She'd run into trouble with Tray. Even though Mother had pulled every string in the House of Commons and the House of Lords and in Buckingham Palace to get Tray let off the six-month animal quarantine, there were still formalities and Pam was going to have to spend at least the next twenty-four hours in some appalling government kennel in Essex, boosting Tray’s morale, until they’d finally released him to his breathless public.

Delight came in from her class and Mother came in from yet another fitting, ecstatically announcing that her Elizabeth II R dress would definitely be ready the next morning. ‘It’s divine, dears — rich but severe, positively severe.’ She seemed
to have forgotten all about that ‘Go-go-we-must-never-see-each-other-again’ routine with Ronnie because she greeted him with little cries and clutches and kisses and talked about a lovely little party for thirty which she was going to give for her birthday just before the Queen. Then we all, in a dreadful group, went to a play and had dinner at the Caprice where, inevitably, Larry, Vivien, Cecil, etcetera etcetera.

Delight adored it. At some point in the middle of it all, I came out of my torpor and realized that she was wallowing. Oh, God, I thought, and later, when I was lying in bed, not sleeping, I suddenly saw my married life stretching ahead with Delight being more and more of a dynamo, more and more of a success, more and more of a celebrity, more and more of a — Mother.

No, I said. Bury that thought, Nickie, destroy it, kill it.

I got up early the next morning. I don’t know why, but there I was awake, and being in bed was worse than anything else. I went into the living-room. Gino was up ahead of me. He was arranging Mother's birthday presents on a table by the window — his present, Pam’s present, Uncle Hans’ present, everyone’s present. It dawned on me that I hadn’t bought her anything. For one mad moment I decided to hell with it. At least not buying her anything would be a gesture, something to express the excruciating clashes inside me.

But Gino said, ‘Okay, kid, where’s your present?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Haven’t got one?’

‘I’m getting it this morning,’ I heard myself saying. ‘There’s plenty of time. She’s not going to open them until this evening at the party anyway.’