More Than You Know (104 page)

There was a long silence; finally Gilmour stood up.

“Mrs. Shaw,” he said gently, “tell us about Emmie, and why you think she needs you. What would happen to her if she didn’t have you.”

“Oh. Yes. Well …” She took a deep breath, then started to speak, gaining some frail momentum as she went. “Emmie, like all children, needs security and familiarity. Like all children, she falls apart when faced by change. Her first preoccupation, when my husband and I told her about the divorce, was not which of us she might be going to live with, but whether she would have to have a different house and a different bedroom. She is happy and confident in herself and her life; she has many friends; she is extremely popular. Running her social life alone is quite a full-time job; she’s got a busier diary than I have …”

Clifford Rogers won’t like that
, thought Philip; he was already regarding Eliza with a certain disdain, clearly seeing her as a younger version of her mother.

“Mrs. Shaw,” said Bruce Hayward, standing up, “are we to infer from this that you feel one of your prime duties as a mother is to organise your child’s social diary?”

“I object to the tone of that question, my lord.”

“No, it’s perfectly reasonable. Answer it, please, Mrs. Shaw.”

“No, of course not. Not a … a prime duty. What I meant was that … that … I can’t do this,” she said suddenly. “I think I should leave it to others to speak for me. I’m sorry.”

“Mrs. Shaw.” Clifford Rogers looked at her quite sternly. “You are
obliged to answer the questions put to you in court. Otherwise you are in contempt. Answer the question.”

“Yes. Well … well, no, not a prime duty. But one of them.”

“And the other duties?” asked Bruce Hayward.

“Well … to … to see to the child’s physical well-being, to give her love and attention, to make her feel secure …”

“And you don’t think leaving a child with a nanny and going out to work would make her feel less secure?”

“Um … possibly. It would depend how you … you organised everything.”

“Possibly. I see. So you decided to give it a go. To see how it worked out?”

“No. Not … not at all.”

Another long silence. Gilmour stood up again.

“Mrs. Shaw, tell us how you felt after your baby died. How this affected your performance as a mother.”

“Oh. Yes. Well, I was very, very … unhappy. And I found Emmie very difficult. She is a very demanding little girl. And she could see … she could see I wasn’t …” Another, very long silence. Then: “I’m sorry. I don’t want to go on with this. I can’t. There could be no defence of what I did to Emmie that day. However provoked I was. Nothing a child said or did could possibly excuse violence on the part of an adult. I’ve already tried to explain why I think Emmie would be better with me. I … I can’t say any more. I’m sorry.”

“Mr. Hayward,” said Clifford Rogers, looking both impatient and bored, “do you have any questions for Mrs. Shaw?”

“Only one, at this stage, my lord. Mrs. Shaw, your psychiatric treatment was clearly very successful, and how fortunate that it was. How long after the … the incident with your daughter were you able to go to Milan? To stay with your friends in their villa?”

He somehow managed to endow the word
villa
with connotations of debauchery.

“Oh … well … about three months. Maybe two.”

“Where you were obviously able to enjoy yourself quite considerably. Shopping, the opera, dining out—all very therapeutic as well, no doubt.”

Eliza was silent.

“And when you returned, then you began to think about returning to work, as I understand it. That would require considerable self-confidence, surely, after a prolonged absence?”

“Well, yes. Yes, I suppose so. But I knew … Well, I thought … Oh, I don’t know.”

“Mrs. Shaw,” said Clifford Rogers wearily, “that is not acceptable. I have said before, you are obliged to answer the questions put to you. Proceed, Mr. Hayward.”

“I was only seeking to ascertain, my lord, whether Mrs. Shaw had found it easy to find the necessary self-confidence to return to work. Mrs. Shaw?”

“Not really, no,” said Eliza, “but I also thought it would help.”

“Help what exactly?”

“My state of mind.”

“Which was?”

“Well … very unhappy. And … and lonely.”

“And … staying at home and caring for your child was not going to help that?”

He was a clever bastard, thought Toby; this was getting worse by the minute.

“Well … no, not really,” said Eliza.

“Thank you, Mrs. Shaw. No more questions, my lord.”

Toby was back on his feet. “I would like to call Miss Scarlett Shaw.”

Overwhelmed by her failure to perform, Eliza sat and watched Scarlett in awe. She was dressed in a brilliant blue linen trouser suit, her glossy dark hair pulled back from her face.

“I have known Eliza Shaw for many years,” she said, smiling briefly across at Eliza, “and I have seen her with her daughter countless times; I was a frequent visitor to their home. She is a quite marvellous mother. She’s endlessly patient, she’s fun, plays with her all the time, never stops trying to amuse her, she plans outings, she takes her all over the place, and yet she’s very firm with her; she doesn’t spoil her. She makes her do her homework, learn her spellings and so on. And she runs her life. It’s very, very complicated, Emmie’s life, ballet, gym, music, the riding at the weekend, parties—I’d need a secretary if it was mine. And that’s
one of the reasons I think my brother would find it so hard to cope with caring for Emmie full-time.”

Toby Gilmour was playing devil’s advocate. “I would have thought a man who ran a considerable business empire could organise a little girl’s life for her.”

“Well, yes, but not if he was still trying to run the empire. Matt—Mr. Shaw—is a very all-or-nothing person; that’s how he’s achieved what he has. And I know he says he’ll give it up, but I don’t think he’ll be able to; he loves it all too much. Don’t get me wrong; I admire him more than I can tell you, but … delivering and fetching to and from parties, taking Emmie to the dentist and the doctor, remembering to buy birthday presents for her friends, getting costumes made for the dancing displays—I’ve watched Eliza doing all this, at the same time as she’s running her own life, and she’s brilliant at it. Women are; it’s in our genes …”

“What is in your genes, Miss Shaw?” Clifford Rogers was watching Scarlett with a certain fascination.

“Well … you know … doing six things at once. Men—with respect, my lord—usually can’t.”

“I … must observe myself more closely,” said Clifford Rogers. There was a polite murmur of laughter round the court.

“Are you telling us, Miss Shaw”—Bruce Hayward had risen to his feet—“that this and this alone would prevent your brother from being a good parent to Emmeline?”

“No, of course not. And I do think he is completely devoted to Emmie; he’s a brilliant father, quite ahead of his time as a parent, but I don’t think he can play both roles. I really don’t. They’re both brilliant parents, in their different ways; it’s such a … a … dreadful shame.”

There was a long silence; then Toby Gilmour said, “Thank you, Miss Shaw.”

Scarlett stepped down from the witness box; everybody was watching her in various stages of admiration. As she left the court there was a slight disturbance and a clerk came in, gave a note to Philip. He read it, then scribbled something on it and gave it back to the clerk. And wrote a note of his own and passed it to Toby.

Eliza, her misery only slightly eased by Scarlett’s performance, was too wretched even to notice.

“My lord, I would now like to call Mr. Jack Beckham, the editor of
the
Daily News
. Mr. Beckham, you employed Eliza Shaw as fashion editor on a magazine you edited, I believe? Could you tell us its name?”

Beckham looked relaxed and cheerful and clearly intended to enjoy himself hugely.

“It was called
Charisma
. I edited it from 1963 to 1968. Then I decided it was time I did a proper job and went back to Fleet Street.”

“And Mrs. Shaw came to work for you … when?”

“Oh, in 1963, as fashion assistant. I was very impressed with her from the word go. I had my reservations, as I knew she’d been a deb and all that nonsense, but she proved herself in days. She worked round the clock; nothing was too much for her. We gave her husband a big break, matter of fact, included him in a feature on the new young blood around—very good publicity, not sure that he appreciated it enough—but anyway … They were good together at the time. Damn shame, all this. But it happens, doesn’t it?”

“Try to keep to the point, Mr. Beckham,” said Clifford Rogers.

“I’d have thought that was the point. Certainly part of it.”

“And … when did you make her fashion editor?” asked Toby, terrified Clifford Rogers would haul Beckham up for contempt of court. But he actually appeared rather delighted by him.

“Oh … about nine months later. Everyone said it was too soon, but I knew it wasn’t; there wasn’t another candidate to touch her. Very, very clever girl, always coming up with the goods. I’m proud to have been involved in her career. Then she had to throw it all away.”

“Indeed? How did she do that?”

“She got herself pregnant. Said she had to leave when she’d had the baby. I did everything I could to make her stay, flattered her, bribed her with more money, but she said it was out of the question.”

“Did she give a reason?”

“Yes, she did; she said she had to stay at home and look after the child. I tried again a few years later to get her to come as fashion editor at the
News
, but she said she couldn’t. Same reason.”

“Thank you, Mr. Beckham.”

“Mr. Hayward?”

“Mr. Beckham, it was in your paper, I believe, that the article about Mr. Shaw’s tenants was published.”

“It was indeed.”

“So … you were still in touch with Mrs. Shaw?”

“I don’t know quite what you’re implying.”

“I’m not implying anything, Mr. Beckham. Merely trying to find the background to the article.”

“I had nothing to do with the article; it was done entirely through my property editor, Johnny Barrett. She’d met him, and she got in touch with him herself. I subsequently discovered she tried to get it taken out of the paper, but it was too late.”

“Thank you, Mr. Beckham. Could we hear from Mr. Barrett next?”

Something was going on; Eliza was puzzled. Both Philip and Toby asked her to excuse them at lunchtime, and Caroline, Philip’s assistant, escorted her to a local coffee shop for sandwiches. Not that she could eat them. She felt sick with misery, overwhelmed by her wretched performance in the witness box.

“The reporter, Johnny Barrett, was great, wasn’t he?” said Caroline; and indeed he had been, stressing that Eliza had done her utmost to discourage him from writing the article, even before she had realised the developers were colleagues of Matt’s.

Bruce Hayward had suggested it was naive of Eliza to think that any article about the property business might not be in danger of damaging Matt, but Johnny Barrett said he had known Eliza for a long time, and he could vouch for the pride she felt in Matt’s company. “First time I met her, she practically bent my ear right off telling me how brilliant he was.”