The Yellow Room Conspiracy Page 13

  The first thing anyone says about Michael—anyone who’s met him, I mean—is that he was the ugliest man they ever saw, and the next breath they’ll tell you how attractive he was. I once asked him about it. He’d just got up and was wandering round the room, stark naked, scratching like a chimpanzee. He was a very hairy man, but the hair was in strange places, tangled and wiry across his chest and down his legs but then shorter and almost as thick as a dog’s pelt around his crotch and up on either side of his paunch, which was bald. And there was an extraordinary patch like the ace of spades below the small of his back, with the stem running down into the cleavage between his buttocks. His skin was a nasty suety white, like dumplings. He drank a fair bit, smoked at least ten cigars a day and ate incredible amounts. He always ordered a double helping of anything in restaurants, and often when the meal was over and everyone was drinking their coffee he’d send for another steak. (Yes, that was still against the rationing laws then, but Michael knew places where he could do it.) He didn’t like being fat so he did exercises, but he still managed to look flabby.

  Anyway there he was, shambling round my bedroom, grunting and scratching his armpits. I’d just woken up.

  “If your skin wasn’t so horrid white you’d look like an ape in the zoo,” I said. “What on earth do people see in you?”

  I expect I was cross with him about something. I usually was. He was the sort who likes to push you right to the edge and see whether you’ll come back, and for a bit you do, even though you know quite well what’s going on. He stopped in front of my long mirror and stood there, looking at his reflection as if it was a statue in a museum. Then he laughed, really pleased with himself.

  “I am an ape,” he said, “and so are you. The challenge is to evoke our primitive nature.”

  I’ve run on a bit, but not much. I was going to bed with him a week after the Hunt Ball, and that lasted several months. He never told me anything about his work. He usually slept at my flat, and complained how poky it was. He had a flat of his own, one large plain room, with a bit of cheap furniture, up above a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, but I knew he must have somewhere else to live because he had a lot of good clothes and he didn’t keep much there. We nearly always ate at restaurants or dined with friends. He loved ballet. I think we saw every new production, some of them two or three times. Some opera, a few plays, no films.

  There’s no getting away from it, Michael was a complete bastard. That’s something else everyone will tell you. I’ve thought about this a lot, because having an affair with him is one of the few things I’m really ashamed of in my whole life. I think I knew from the very first that I was doing something wrong. The easy way out is to say that I couldn’t help myself, but that’s not true. Of course I could. I’d got pretty good at saying no. It isn’t anything to do with looks, or not much, but some men have something about them which gives you an impulse to say yes, in spite of yourself, but unless you’re practically feeble-minded you don’t give in to it. Michael had as much of that as any man I’ve ever met, but it still doesn’t explain his effect on people.

  I’m not just talking about sex. This is men as well as women. People actually seemed to want to give in to him. I think he was right about it being something primitive. He was like one of those African kings you read about (I never know whether this sort of story is true) who thought they could feed their own soul-power by eating their enemies” hearts. He turned people into things he could use, and we let him. Why? I am not just a piece of decoration with no mind of her own, but that’s how he sometimes treated me. And I let him.

  The first time I really understood about this was an extraordinary party Michael took me to, somewhere out in the East End in a kind of hall like a dreary old barn outside but decorated like a palace in a pantomime inside, and everything lavish as all-get-out, masses of food, lashings of scotch and champagne, long dresses (I never saw so many sequins), dinner jackets, a twelve-piece band playing jazz and smooch-music, but everything just a little bit wrong, a bit in the way Hollywood high-life films are, but different from those too. For instance, the champagne was sweet. Most of the dinner-jackets had padded shoulders and immense lapels. A lot of the women had orchises sort-of appliqué-ed to them somewhere or other, and make-up an inch thick, and hair done into enormous constructions which they kept patting. And they had huge busts with bras that made them stick out like mantelpieces (very convenient for the orchises). And they were property. They belonged to the men, who were mostly older than they were, and short and square and blue-chinned and dangerous-looking. They treated me as if I belonged to Michael, and so did he. He’d brought me there to show them that he’d got a bit of property just as good as any of theirs.

  I danced with some of the men. They held me close against them, but they were pretty good, and the band was terrific. One of the men asked me how long I’d known Michael. I said off and on for years. He said (I can’t do the accent), “He’s a good boy. Fine lawyer. Done well for my nephew, well as anyone could of, in the circs. Just so long as he doesn’t get too clever. You can tell him that, from me.”

  I did, on the way home, and Michael laughed. He was pleased.

  “Was all that food and drink black market?” I said.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  Sorry, I’ve gone astray. It was this business of belonging, of being a piece of property he could do what he liked with - why did we put up with it?

  Of course he could be charming—I’ve said that. It got him off to a good start with people. But it wasn’t ordinary charm. You felt that at once. There was something dangerous about it, like a purring tiger. He liked talking, and he was really interesting because he seemed to know such a lot, especially about what was going on, the real underneath reasons of things, money of course, but politics too, and arty things. He gobbled books, the way he ate. He used to lie in my bath with the hot water trickling in to keep it scalding and read a whole novel in an hour, and get out and know what he thought about it by the time he’d towelled himself down. He was interesting in another way too, in himself, I mean. You felt that there was a lot to find out about him, but you’d have to be very careful doing the finding.

  He threw money about because he liked looking generous, but he could be really mean as well. It all depended on whether he thought meanness or generosity would get him what he wanted, which was usually getting someone else to do something they’d have preferred not to. One time he told me he was tired of my wardrobe and I must get myself everything new. I told him he’d have to pay for it because I was saving up to buy myself a TR2. (He knew this already.)

  He said, “Don’t be stupid. Just put the bills in the waste-paper basket. There’s plenty of dressmakers who’d pay to be able to tell people you’re wearing their stuff.”

  “That’s why I won’t let them,” I said.

  I remember how he looked at me. I knew I was digging my heels in and this was something he couldn’t make me do. He knew too. And the very next week my agent told me that a series of advertisements for one of the new synthetics had been cancelled. I’d rather been counting on them. They would have been the final dollop of money for the TR. My agent was very angry about it. She said the reasons she’d been told didn’t make sense. It just happened that I knew a girl at the advertising agency well enough to ring her up at home and ask her if she knew anything and she nosed around and rang back and told me that one of the directors had suddenly descended on them, though he hadn’t got anything at all to do with that account, and said his wife was tired of my face. This was even more baffling, because I’d actually met the woman at the ballet one evening. Michael had introduced me to her. It was a new ballet company and he was on the board, and so was she.

  She was a vague-looking, fluty-arty old girl, and I thought she’d hardly noticed me because she was so busy loving the way Michael was buttering her up.

  At first I thought she must simply have
taken against me then, for some reason, but then, well, I’d told Michael about the ads being cancelled and he’d pretended not to be interested, which was usual, but when I told him about the director’s wife I must have caught him by surprise, because just for a flicker of a half second he gave me a furious look before he said “What balls. The man’s a shit. He’s just making excuses. He probably wants you for himself. I’ll ask her about it.” And then he was specially nice to me for the rest of the evening.

  I still don’t know whether he’d fixed the whole thing up to punish me for not doing what he wanted about my clothes, but I think so now. I didn’t at first. I suppose I couldn’t imagine anyone being that mean, but you live and learn. But even then the whole business of him trying to make me get my dresses without paying for them was one of the things—the women at that party had been another—one of the things which were making me feel I’d better stop seeing him, if I could find a way how. That sounds stupid, but to be honest I was afraid of him. I wonder whether he had actually guessed I wanted to stop, because of the way he behaved when Tommy Seddon proposed.

  Before I go on with that I’d better admit—though you’ve probably guessed by now—that all this was the reason why I behaved so badly at Father’s funeral. That’s another thing I’m really ashamed of, or rather it’s part of the same thing. It wasn’t even that I knew Ben was making a terrible mistake and I couldn’t tell her. I’m afraid the fact is I was jealous of her, not just that she was taking on one of my old lovers, and he’d actually proposed to her, which he never had to me, though there was all that. But what I was really afraid of in my heart of hearts was that she’d be able to cope with him, understand him, not just what he was up to but what he was really like inside. She’d be the one who opened the Bluebeard door and got away with it. Anyone else and I’d have been cheering them on, but not Ben.

  Well, Tommy proposed. By letter, typically. Old Lord Seddon was dead now. They found him on the West Terrace with his neck broken. He must have been climbing out to try and get to the Oval for his test match, though there was snow on the ground. So Tommy was in the House of Lords making speeches about foreign affairs and everyone was saying he was a coming man. The proposal came out of the blue though I’d been seeing a fair bit of him because Michael and he were rather cronies (though you wouldn’t have thought they’d got a bit in common, but Michael was like that and so, I found out later, was Tommy) but he’d given no sign.

  When the post came Michael was on his rowing machine. This was a wooden affair with enormous creaking springs which he’d insisted on bringing to my flat, where it took up most of the spare bedroom. The letter came in a lovely thick House of Lords envelope so I picked it up off the doormat and opened it in the passage to see what it was, and laughed aloud.

  The creaking and puffing stopped.

  “What’s up?” said Michael.

  “Tommy Seddon’s asked me to marry him,” I said. He rowed a few more strokes and stopped again.

  “Not a bad idea,” he said. “He needs a wife. You’d fit the bill.”

  “What about me, for heaven’s sake!” I said.

  “What were you proposing to do with yourself?” he said. “Wait till you fall in love with someone?”

  “That sort of thing,” I said.

  “Indeed?” he said.

  No, he didn’t say it, he sneered it, a real lawyer’s sneer, the sort that’s supposed to make witnesses stammer and contradict themselves. He went on rowing. I read the letter again.

  It was rather charming, old-fashioned without being pompous. He didn’t say he loved me. I approved of that.

  “You actually want me to marry Tommy Seddon?” I said.

  “Nothing to do with me,” he said.

  “If I marry anyone I’m going to be faithful to them,” I said.

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” he said.

  I only just stopped myself from saying something about him being tired of me, which was the sort of barmaidish kind of thing you found yourself saying, almost as if he made you so that he could despise you for it. That’s what he wanted, I’m pretty sure, to despise me, and I didn’t quite let him. Anyway he got off his rowing machine and came and stood over me. I knew he wasn’t going to hit me—it would have been almost a relief if he had—but it was still difficult not to feel frightened.

  “I’ve told you it’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “But since you seem to want my opinion I think you would be extremely stupid not to marry Tommy Seddon. You would be as happy married to him as you would to anyone else. Your style of looks will go out of fashion in a year or two. As Tommy’s wife you would have a reasonable certainty of being comfortable.”

  “I’d have to tell him about you,” I said.

  “He knows,” he said.

  Then he went and sponged himself off with cold water and got dressed. I was running my bath so I didn’t hear him leave. When I got back from work that evening I found his rowing machine and everything else of his gone, and his key on the mat. (I bet he’d had a spare cut, though, before he gave it back.)

  I didn’t answer Tommy’s letter at once. After a few days he telephoned me. I told him I’d been very surprised and I still didn’t know what to say. He asked me to dinner at his club, which was the Athenaeum. I made no bones about how unsuitable I thought I was, and the sort of life I’d been living, though I didn’t mention anyone by name. He just said, “I was aware of that. I thought perhaps you might like to settle down.”

  I told him I’d think about it. We went to a play or two. Our dinners together got less stiff. I heard him speak in the House of Lords, about China. He was extremely good. He showed me his house in Eaton Square, and I went over from Blatchards and spent a whole day (and it took a whole day!) going round Seddon Hall. Outside the absurd downstairs rooms it was a surprisingly friendly-feeling house, full of ingenious convenient Victorian arrangements. Perhaps it was that that made me say Yes. I made him come to bed with me before we announced the engagement, which he disapproved of. He’d never done it before, believe it or not, but we just about managed and I thought I could teach him. It’s funny how easy it is to make that mistake.

  The other snag was that Tommy was a Catholic. Apparently the Seddons always were, right back to the Reformation, but they didn’t make a fuss about it, in fact old Lord Seddon’s real religion was cricket, and most of the time it seemed as if Tommy’s was foreign affairs, but deep down inside he’d got sticking-points. I was the usual automatic C of E—if I’d really bothered to think about it ever I wouldn’t have believed it—and I suppose Tommy thought it wouldn’t be much of an effort for me to switch over to the same sort of automatic RC one day, but all we’d agreed at the time was that though we couldn’t have a full-dress Catholic wedding because of me not being one, so in the eyes of the Church we weren’t really married, in his eyes we still were and he wasn’t going to divorce me if things went wrong, but he wouldn’t hold me to that—though of course I said Sauce for the goose and made the same promise.

  So we got married in our church and had a terrific society wedding from Blatchards (which Tommy paid for most of though we let everyone think it was all Father) and we settled down and things went rather well for a bit. I got pregnant twice and had a daughter and a son. I’m afraid I was never very interested in them when they were children, but Mother was besotted on them so they spent a lot of time at Blatchards, and Harriet found a jolly Nanny for them who they soon loved much better than me, and quite right too. Years later Rowena told me she used to pray that I’d die of something quick and painless so that Tommy could marry Nanny and they could be a proper family. Actually that might have worked very well.

  Paul’s unfair to Tommy. He was a really nice man, completely honourable and always fair to me. There’ve only been two men in my life I felt I could totally trust. Paul’s one and Tommy was the other. What happened a few years later was a kind of madne
ss, coming out from deep inside him, from long ago, probably before he could remember. I sometimes think that if I’d been able to love him it mightn’t have happened, but I couldn’t, and that was my fault. I’ve never loved anyone, not like that, except possibly Father. I don’t know how. It’s a bit like religion. You go to church and you go to church and nothing happens so you read books about Christ’s love for us all and how marvellous it is when you feel it and you try again and still nothing happens. And then you give up.

  Anyway Tommy wasn’t like Paul says, and not like the Vicky cartoons either. I really hated them, because at home he was friendly and funny and not at all pompous. He was good with the children, especially when they were small, and really delighted to have an heir, but for some reason he found the whole business of pregnancy terribly disturbing and second time round he stopped wanting to come to bed with me. That went on after Timmy was born, but it took me a bit of time to realise he was having to grit his teeth before he could touch me. The Conservatives had won a General Election and Churchill was PM and Tommy was Lord Seneschal, which is one of those weird left-over offices from the days when kings had proper courts. He didn’t have any seneschalling to do, whatever that is, and the only thing I remember about that side of it is that if he visited Warwick all the church bells had to be rung and the Mayor had to present him with a pair of satin slippers (we got them made my size, of course). The real point was that he was a government minister, part of the Foreign Office team, and among other things helped look after FO business in the House of Lords, so he was usually late enough home to have an excuse for sleeping in his dressing-room.

  PAUL VII

  Spring 1956

  One of the still continuing tedia of having been involved in the so-called Seddon Affair is the reaction of strangers as soon as they make the connection. Two questions invariably pass through their minds: Did I meet Sammy Whitstable? Was I one of those who made use of her services? Few people in fact bring themselves to the point of asking either question, but I don’t think I’m being over-sensitive. I am sure that had I been one of these outsiders I would feel the same curiosity. Notoriety has that effect. It is only human to wish to know how far reality coincides with myth.