Cool Repentance (2 page)

'Don't be ridiculous, Gregory.' This time Julian was definitely cross. 'This is nothing to do with Christabel. It's the Larminster Festival. Surely I don't need to remind you of the existence of the Larminster Festival?'

'Hardly. Yes, thank you, Christabel, I will have an egg. No toast. Yes, I know I should look after myself more and I'm too thin. Both sides please.'

'I know your tastes, darling.'

'Hardly can
 I 
forget it,' continued Gregory, easing himself down on to the polished bench, with its bright check cushions, by the kitchen
table
. 'It's rapidly turning into the Gregory Rowan Festival, I fear. Since that touring company is bringing down one of my plays - their idea, nothing to do with me. I would have so much preferred to write a moving piece specially for the Festival about the night King Charles [I spent at Larminster escaping after Worcester. Good rousing local stuff: the village inn, the village maiden, lots of them, a rib-tickling mistress of the tavern, a Mistress Quickly part - would have been good part for you there, Christabel, if you're really making a come-back - exciting new departure style—'

'The Larminster Festival,' said Julian, pointedly interrupting, 'has been chosen by some television company—'

'Megalith,' put in Christabel. 'Cy Fredericks runs it. That's the point. He's a darling. Or rather, he used to be a darling. That sort of thing doesn't change.'

'Larminster has been chosen to feature in a coming series about British arts festivals. From the highest to the lowest.' Julian smiled, more at ease. *I imagine Larminster comes somewhere near the bottom of the latter category. If not
the
bottom. The presenter, or whatever you call it, is that woman with reddish hair everybody goes on about for being so beautiful and so brilliant, what is she called? She generally concentrates on social causes like housing and unmarried mothers and that sort of thing. She did that huge series last year called
The Poor and their Place.
The arts, we gather, are a new line. What
is
she called, darling?'

But it was Gregory Rowan who supplied the name.

'Jemima Shore,' he said in a thoroughly disconcerted voice. 'Jemima Shore Investigator, as she is laughingly known. General busybody might be a better name. You have to be referring to Jemima Shore. Is
she
coming here? To the Larminster Festival?'

'She
is coming to Lark Manor,' responded Christabel, placing a 
perfectly fried egg in a ramekin in front of Gregory; she gave the impression of performing the action in front of a larger audience. There you are, just as you like it. Eat up. Never say I don't look after you, darling.'

3

Sea-Shells

On the way to Sunday lunch at Lark Manor, Jemima Shore took a detour which brought her down to the sea. She took along her assistant, the lovely Cherry; Flowering Cherry as she was known at Megalithic House. The famous curves which were the toast of that establishment were on this occasion delineated by a tightly belted mackintosh; it covered Cherry's traditional outfit of white silk pearl-buttoned blouse, buttons hardly adequate to the task imposed upon them, and short tight skirt (Cherry was one of those girls who never noticed the temporary disappearances of the mini-skirt from the ranks of high fashion).

Cherry, who both admired and loved Jemima Shore with all the enthusiasm of her passionate nature, nevertheless felt able to disapprove her inordinate taste for the sea without disloyalty.

'At least she can't plunge in, this time,' thought Cherry, huddling her shoulders as she stood among the pebbles; she looked like a plump little bird, fluffing out its feathers.

Jemima Shore, immaculate as usual in a red suede jacket and dark-blue trousers with long boots - 'That jacket must have cost a
fortune,'
thought Cherry reverently - stood at the edge of the water watching it hiss towards her feet. She looked, Cherry reflected with less reverence, as though she expected a message from Megalith Television to arrive in a bottle.

But when the message came, it was not from Megalith Television and it was not in a bottle. Jemima and Cherry appeared to be alone on the seashore. The stretch of shingly beach was not in itself very extensive: the centre of it was a river - the river Lar no doubt, for according to the one signpost Jemima had suddenly spotted on their route to the manor, they had passed through Larmouth. The river was surrounded by groups of trees on either side of its banks where it flowed onto the beach, making a 
shallow course among the pebbles. The village itself appeared to consist of one pub called The King's Escape (jolly picture of a black-moustached Charles II swinging in the breeze above, empty plastic tables outside), a telephone kiosk and a row of cottages. But the beach was quite hidden from the view of the houses by a turn of the cliff; this made it an unexpectedly secluded and charming place.

Jemima's fast Mercedes sports car, a recent acquisition, was parked on the crunchy pebbles where the grassland gave way to the sea-scape beneath the lee of the cliffs. It was a new crunch which attracted Cherry's attention, although Jemima - 'mooning as though she'd never seen the sea before' in Cherry's words - did not turn her head.

The crunch was caused by a very large, not particularly well-kept, estate car; it was black and with its long body bore a certain resemblance to a hearse. The man who got out of it was however so long in himself that Cherry got the feeling that he might have needed the hearse to house his legs. Like Jemima, he wore very tight trousers, although his - pale cords -were as worn as hers were pristine. Standing together by the sea-shore, with their height and slimness, they resembled two birds, two herons perhaps, visiting the sea.

Cherry was one who, however preoccupied, never failed to assess a male face; she had rather liked the look of this one as he passed. The worn countenance in particular appealed. Cherry was, as she put it, currently into older and worn men (it was fortunate too for her enthusiasm that the two categories so often coincided). Cherry was a great watcher of late-night thirties movies on television, a way of life which had probably started the craze. Of this particular worn face, she had noted as he passed, with satisfaction: 'Like Bogart. On stilts.'

Cherry, watching them at a distance, thought sentimentally that they made a nice couple - 'Both so tall. Though Jem always seems to fancy more the short and powerful type. Is he some dishy country squire, I wonder? Would Jem like that - the lady of the manor? Probably
not. Never mind Jemima. Would I
like it?' Thus Cherry's mind made its accustomed moves towards local romance and its fulfilment, particularly as she had lately decided that a Substantial Older Man (face, but not bank account, well worn) was the kind of interesting new development her lifestyle needed.

The actual words which were being exchanged while Cherry indulged in these agreeable reveries were rather less romantic.

Jemima Shore had not thought that Gregory Rowan looked in the slightest bit like Humphrey Bogart, although she did have time to notice in a rather more oblique fashion than Cherry that he was quite attractive. And then something happened immediately which made her decide that Gregory Rowan was quite one of the most aggressive over-bearing - and thus unattractive - men she had encountered in recent years.

Gregory Rowan began bluntly enough:

'I hardly think the Larminster Festival is in need of your kind of publicity, Miss Shore,' he said, dragging quite violently on his cigarette as though it was in some danger of extinction.

'And what might my kind of publicity be?' enquired Jemima in her coldest voice, the one she used to freeze unruly - or socially undesirable -interviewees, tycoons wrecking the environment or bland cabinet ministers determined to be jocular rather than truthful.

But Gregory found himself well able to answer the question. To Jemima's considerable surprise she found herself being described as a cultural busybody, a parasite on the body of the arts, and a few other choice terms of abuse - all whilst standing on a cool sea-shore, with the wind whipping her fair hair in her eyes, but hardly disturbing Gregory's own, which was so bushy as to be apparently impregnable to the wind's attacks.

'Why don't you just chuck this programme, Miss Shore? Go away? Go back to London where you belong, and sort out a whole new generation of unmarried mothers who weren't old enough to watch your programme on the Pill -
For and Against—'

'I'm glad at least you're a fan of my work,' interposed Jemima sweetly.

'Fan! You may take this as you wish, but it's the sort of programme you make, the sort of woman you are - oh, all right, before you speak,
person
if you like - which drove me away from jolly old London to live in the woods of Lark! Gregory Rowan, the Happy Hermit. A good television title?
I
read your mind. But that is one title you will never see flashing up on your screen. Which is just one reason, having made my choice, why I don't want my retreat polluted by the mating cries of television.'

'Aren't you taking all this rather too personally, Mr Rowan? After all—' This time Jemima was valiantly maintaining her sweetness of manner, as much to annoy as to placate, when suddenly a swoosh of icy water covered her boot and caused her to jump sharply backwards. To her surprise, Gregory Rowan paid no attention whatsoever, either to her jump or to the ingression of the sea. The swirling wave covered his feet in their gym shoes, sought out his ankles, and he did not even move.

Jemima Shore, retreating, continued her sentence, trying to match his own composure. The tide was coming in quite fast, and even Jemima, dedicated bather in a more salubrious climate, did not propose to be involuntarily immersed in the English seas in April.

'After all, Megalith Television is not trying to mate with you, Mr Rowan, merely cover the Larminster Festival as part of a nation-wide series - not at all the same thing - as for your dislike of London—' The waters were softly receding but Jemima kept a watchful eye for the next insurgence - 'it doesn't seem to extend to the West End theatre, I notice? 
Or to the production of your plays in London television studios? So that while
you
expect to be sacrosant, West End money—'

Whatever Gregory Rowan would have replied to that was swallowed up by jemima's hasty and crunchy retreat up the shore at the next wave.

Gregory Rowan watched her. Once again he made no move either to retreat himself or assist her on the pebbles. He merely smiled. His smile gave an unexpectedly pleasant cast to his countenance - that countenance Cherry had aptly characterized as 'worn' - but his words were if anything even more ungracious.

'I suppose you expect me to cry out penitently
louche
and fall at your feet in worship? You've got me quite wrong. It's not London productions of my plays I object to, the more the merrier so far as I'm concerned. Hello, Shaftesbury Avenue, hail to the National! I'll even consider something warm, human and musical at the RSC. Failing that, a permanent rotating series of my plays at the Round House, or if Chalk Farm sounds too pastoral, the Royal Court. And all that goes for teievision too. How is Megalith's drama by the way?'

'Exquisite,' Jemima put in swiftly. Gregory proceeded as if she had not spoken.

'No, it's Larminster I want to preserve from your ghastly grip. Larminster and its inhabitants.' 'Principally yourself?'

Gregory looked at her as if measuring her. His gaze, if speculative, remained cold. Whatever he was measuring her for, was not she felt, likely to appeal.

'Oddly enough, not,' he said after a while. 'As you've pointed out, I at least have considerable experience of television. And,' he paused, 'I've nothing to hide. But have you thought of the effects a television programme, the sheer making of a television programme, has on ordinary people?*

He lit another cigarette. The water was swirling round his shoes again; Jemima remained out of danger.

'People who do have something to hide? Bruised people? Vulnerable people? There are such people in the world, Miss Shore, even if you, with a toss of your golden head, have no cognizance of them. Let me come to the point. Hasn't Christabel suffered enough from you people? Haven't we all suffered enough on her behalf and through her? Her husband? Her children? Everyone who is or was close lo her, some of them very humble people by your standards, Miss Shore, but still people by mine. Vulnerable, bruised people, people who have - forgive my old-fashioned language, so unlike the language no doubt to which you're used - people who have repented what they did. What might television do to them? You might even try thinking sometimes of the meek, Miss Shore - after all it's not Megalith Television that's going to inherit the earth.'

Jemima wondered whether there was any point in reminding this odious man that her name in television as Jemima Shore Investigator had been made by calling attention exactly to the meek - the inarticulate, the oppressed and the helpless. The arrival of Cherry, brightly extending one plump little paw on which lay a small pinkish cockleshell, decided her against it.

'Look, Jem, for you,' she cried. 'For your shell bathroom in London. To join the world-wide collection.' Cherry, goggling huge eyes at Gregory Rowan, was clearly demanding an introduction. Jemima, thinking that Flowering Cherry was welcome to the disagreeable Gregory Rowan, duly made it.

'Jemima brings back sea-shells from all round the world,' Cherry confided. 'And
1
help her.' Cherry (one of the stauncher characters Jemima knew) was one of those people who managed to look nubile and in need of protection, even in a mackintosh. Possibly for this reason, Gregory Rowan addressed her in quite a different tone, both lighter and warmer.

'You sell sea-shells to Jemima Shore. Hence the name. It's an alias, I suppose. Foolishly, I had always supposed she was born with it. However I'm not sure these particular Larmouth shells are going to qualify. You see, my dear young lady, I've been trying to persuade your boss to cancel her programme. Leave Larminster and its Festival to its own devices.'

Cherry looked quite astonished: she could no more envisage cancelling a scheduled programme without reason than she could envisage anyone not actually pining for that programme to happen, not jumping at the chance to be featured in it.

Gregory Rowan said in his newly pleasant voice: 'Amazed, are you?
1
see you are. Your eyes remind me of the dog in the fairy story, eyes as big as saucers. Clearly
you
have nothing to hide. Get your boss to explain that remark by the way.'

He swung round. 'Look, there it is. There they both are, as a matter of fact. Have you got good eyesight?'

He was addressing Cherry again but it was Jemima who replied in her cool voice: 'I can see most things pretty clearly, I fancy.'

'Look then. Two gaps in the hills, like bites. Or gaps between huge teeth. The Giant's Teeth we call them round here. You can see the theatre quite clearly: that black turret effect. More like a watchtower than a theatre at this distance. Hence its name. It was supposed to be called the Royal like the old one, but Watchtower just stuck. Lark Manor is more difficult to spot: the light local stone.'

'So close to the sea! The theatre, I mean,' exclaimed Cherry; it was apparent at least to Jemima that Cherry's agile mind had rushed ahead to picnic-time, to time between shooting, to light evenings, to young actors, perhaps, or those not so young, all far from home. Jemima said:

'It's an excellent view. Thank you for showing it to us. An opening shot, perhaps?' she addressed the last remark, at least in principle, to Cherry.

'Locals round here don t like the way the theatre dominates the landscape. So harsh and modern. Unlike Lark Manor which melds into the background. That's why I showed them both to you. It clashes with our quiet rural life, they think with unpleasant results. Like television. Think about it, Miss Jemima Shore, and take your sea-shells home after lunch.'