At Death's Door (10 page)

“What have I done to be treated like this?”

“That's a good question,” said Cordelia. “Perhaps I won't concentrate on husbands and lovers. Perhaps I'll tell them how you locked me in your costume trunk and left me crying and screaming for an hour while you made love to Murray. That
was
Murray, wasn't it? Shall I tell them of all the schools you sent me away to and all the scenes you made there before you took me out of them? Shall I tell them the things you used to say to me when I was going through adolescence: how I'd never be a beauty, never get a husband, always be a useless, spotty lump. That was your exact phrase, I remember. They'll want to know about all the scenes, all the rages, the outrageous performances at every emotional crisis of your life. They expect that sort of thing from the acting profession. And of course I'll tell them how the rages were vented on me: how you've sneered at me in public, called me stupid, plain, frigid, robbed me of every shred
of self-confidence I had, and broken up all my pathetic little romances.”

“That's nonsense. I never have.”

Cordelia turned on her with narrowed eyes. “Don't lie in private, lie in public, Mother. You know, and I know, how it's been. Now I've broken away from you, I can see it clearer than ever.”

“I have one consolation—one consolation,” said Myra, raising her eyes to heaven as if suddenly transplanted into a mid-Victorian weepie. “None of this is publishable.”

“Oh, but the Ben episode will come out,” said Cordelia, smiling complacently. “The private life of an actress is maybe not of
that
much interest, except to the sensational press. But Ben was a great writer. Most of your others have been nonentities, like Granville, but Ben was great. People are going to write biographies of Ben whether you like it or not. You don't imagine they are going to ignore the affair with you, do you? Anyway, I certainly shan't. In fact, it's going to be central to my book, the opening episode. It illustrates so beautifully the essence of your emotional life: the way you sail into affairs, because you see some glory or some advantage to yourself, and then fall flat on your face and get lumbered with the consequences. Notably me. I'm one of the consequences you got lumbered with, and you've never forgiven me.”

“You won't be able to publish any of this, you know.”

“You'll die,” said Cordelia without compassion. “You'll grow old and terrible and lonely, but eventually you'll die. Then I shall publish.”

Myra underwent one of her rapid changes of mood, and her voice took on a wheedling tone. “You've got it all wrong, you know. The story of my affair with Ben. You've never let me tell my side.”

“Oh, I know your side of the story. I've read it in the
News of the World
for September 1963. Though your account
was not very accurate. In fact, it was a tissue of lies.”

“It was not!”

“You rearrange the facts to suit your view of yourself. I know the facts because I've read the letters.”

“You scrubby little muckraker! You've been reading my letters to Ben!”

“I have. No wonder he tired of you so quickly. I've never seen such a prolonged howl of egotism.”

“You don't know the provocation! You don't know what he did to me, the things he said. You've only read one side of it.”

“That's where you're wrong, Mother. Pat and I went down to Pelstock yesterday.”

“
What?
 . . . You're lying. Minnie would never have let you in.”

“Sunday is Minnie's day off, remember? I still have my key to the house. I thought the letters would be in the safe, and I thought I knew the combination number. I've stood at that door often enough, watching you open it to get out jewelry or the little treasures you've got stashed away there. As a child I always used to wonder if there were relics of my father there. And there were! We took them and photocopied them at Pat's school. So now they're part of the archive.”

Myra's face was red and blotchy, her eyes bulbous. “Thief! Traitor!”

“You can only be a traitor where loyalty's due. You gave me no love, no protection, no security. I tried for years to love you, then to admire you, but I never could. You gave me no reason to. That's why I've always clung to the idea of my father—”

“Your father! That cold, old lecher.”

“Oh, I can see now that he was not perfect. I think you're right: He was cold, and probably selfish, too. He capitalized
on his affair with you to make one more novel when his inspiration had been waning for years. But he had dignity, he didn't lie, and he tried to do his duty by me—to support me, if not protect me. Basically he was an honest person.”

“He was a snake! He exploited me!”

“No, Mother, it was you who was the exploiter. If he capitalized on the affair, that's because he knew perfectly well that
you
were exploiting
him
—sleeping with him, having his child, for the kudos, and for the play you hoped to screw out of him. He was not a gentleman, maybe, but he was not a dishonorable man. I was right to cling to the idea of my father.”

There was a moment's silence, and then Myra's face assumed an ugly sneer.

“If he is, in fact, your father.”

Cordelia flinched. “What?”

“If that bundle of senility is in fact your father.”

“I know Ben Cotterel is my father! I even know when I was conceived. It was the weekend you came down from Glasgow, when you were playing in
Earnest
.”

Myra shrugged, smiling dangerously. “Looking at you—so lumpish and stupid—I've always thought your father was probably the Cameron Highlander I had it off with in the train loo on the journey down.”

Cordelia threw herself out of her chair and at her mother, her hands on her throat.

“You're trying to rob me of my father! You monster! You monster!” she screamed.

• • •

Cordelia got back to the Rectory at about half past ten. She didn't go straight down to the tent, but let herself in at the front door—as she had been encouraged to do when she came up to work during the day—and knocked at the door of the sitting room, where Roderick and Caroline were watching the news.

“Hello,” said Caroline, turning the television off. “You're late. I think Pat's down in the tent. Did it go well?”

“What? Oh, the meeting with my mother. It went pretty much as I expected. . . . Well, I suppose rather worse. I was intending to keep very cool.”

“Oh, dear. And you didn't?”

“No, I . . . blew up. Just the sort of scene Myra loves.”

“How did that happen? Was it something she said?”

“Yes. She said— Oh, never mind. I've been walking it off since. I've cooled down now. I realize it was just something she made up simply to get me to blow my top. I should have known she'd do that when things weren't going her way. I was a fool to let her succeed.”

“Is there any chance of making things up?” asked Roderick. “Any use my volunteering as a peacemaker?”

Cordelia's fingers began working nervously at the headscarf she had taken off as she came in.

“None at all, I should think. Unless— Oh, never mind. Just an idea that occurred to me. . . . But there's really no point in trying to be a peacemaker. Mother belongs to a part of my life that's over. Thank God. I want to get the book written, and when it is, I won't much care what happens to it. I'll put one copy in a strongbox and let the publishers and lawyers fight over the text. Maybe they'll just publish the bit about her career. Maybe they can salvage something from the other part. I shan't care much. It will at least exist, and one day someone will read it. I will have got it out of my system.”

“And you can get on with your life,” said Caroline quietly.

“That's right. Maybe make a career in journalism, maybe have a family—who knows, maybe both. Myra will be a part of my past. I didn't want her to come here. I'll be glad if I never see her again.”

“Perhaps that would be wise,” said Caroline. “Sad, but wise. Do you really have to write this book?”

“I think so.” Cordelia paused and darted a sharp look at them both. “Unless . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, I've thought over the past few days, when I've realized what a lot of marvelous material there is here, that what I'd really like to do is write a biography of my father. The authorized biography.”

Roderick and Cordelia looked at her, startled.

“This is a new idea,” said Roderick at last.

“Yes. But I can't see there's anything against it, and there are all sorts of things in its favor. I could tell my mother I'd given up the book on her. . . .”

Roderick screwed up his face. “Of course we've always realized that eventually something of the sort will be written and that in all probability we will have to cooperate—probably, as the heirs, even nominate someone to write it.”

“Well, then.”

“But you see the fact that father is so popular and well-thought-of means that there are all sorts of people queuing up to write it. In America there's even a Benedict Cotterel Society, which writes to us about all sorts of things, from changes in the manuscripts to what brands of underwear he wore. Soon the BBC is going to serialize
The Silver Sky
on television, and that will only increase his popularity. Already there are lots of academics, here and overseas, who have written books on
his
books. Many of them are itching to be asked to write his life.”

“But I wrote my M.A. on him! I've been in love with his books since I was in my early teens.”

Roderick shook his head and became, Caroline thought, horribly schoolmasterish.

“I don't want to be rude, Cordelia, but that is at a rather different level. These are people with solid academic backgrounds, research qualifications. Inevitably we'll
think first of one of them when it comes to picking a biographer. As you know, there are episodes in Father's life—probably more than you realize—that need to be treated with great discretion; honestly, I hope, but still circumspectly.”

“I get you,” said Cordelia with more than a trace of bitterness. “You think I'll be too sensational. Play up the love affairs to get the book serialized in the Sunday papers.”

“No, no, I'm sure you wouldn't,” said Roderick hurriedly. “I know you have too much respect for your father to do that. But inevitably an older, more experienced writer would have more of the necessary weapons. Tact and discretion don't come naturally to the young. You acquire them over the years.”

“And however discreet you were, there would still be something sensational in the situation itself,” Caroline pointed out. “A natural daughter writing the life of her father. It's just made for the Sundays. Inevitably you'd have to write about the affair between Ben and your mother.”

“Oh, yes,” said Cordelia.

“There you are. Even if you did it very discreetly—and to be frank, I don't think you're inclined to do that—it would be seized on.”

“I think you're being very unfair,” said Cordelia. “I'm the best-qualified person to write it because I
am
involved, he
is
part of me. . . . I love him, and always have since I knew about him.”

“From one point of view that's exactly what disqualifies you,” said Roderick.

“Anyway, I don't see any point in our having this conversation
now
,” said Caroline, getting up in the hope of putting an end to it. “Whoever we choose—an American academic, a British one, a professional biographer, you—we aren't going to do it now. To me there's something distasteful
just in talking about it. I'm sure I mentioned to you earlier that we have no intention of doing anything about a biographer until such time as Ben dies.”

Cordelia came up close to Caroline and looked into her eyes.

“Oh, but he is dead, isn't he?” she said.

Into the silence that followed there intruded the siren of an approaching police car.

A
FTER CORDELIA AND MYRA
had disappeared upstairs in the Red Lion to have their “discussion,” the men of the party had trooped through the dining room and back toward the bar.

“Best thing is to have a drink and wait,” said Granville Ashe to Pat. “My guess is, there'll be a big bust-up, and then the peace processes can begin. Anyway, the thing's out of our hands.”

It was, of course. Pat's instinct was to head back to the Rectory and have a read while the light was still good. Granville Ashe had not seemed to him a particularly interesting person on their brief acquaintanceship. But then, anybody in the shadow of Myra Mason was likely to pale. He himself had probably not said more than fifty words during the evening thus far. He would give Granville the benefit of the doubt.

“Fine,” he said with his slow smile. “Just a pint, and then I'll be cutting off home.”

The bar was less crowded than it had been before dinner. The Red Lion at Maudsley attracted a healthy
rather than a drinking clientele. Many of the resident guests were probably taking an evening stroll down the cliffs to the beach or observing wildlife on the Downs. There were a great number of bird-watchers among the people who booked in there summer after summer. Pat bought the drinks and, observing that Roderick Cotterel's sister was already in the bar, steered Granville in the opposite direction. Pat recognized poison when he saw it. Granville came to rest at an empty table beside Commodore and Daisy Critchley. Unfortunately, the commodore did not seem disposed to regard the tables as separate.

“Ah, the ladies have gone for a chat, have they?” he said with that geniality that Caroline found suspect. “Mother-and-daughter talk, I suppose.”