Millie Swain was crying. She knew they were not pretty tears. Even now, in spite of what had happened, she was filled with rage and disgust at Madre, rage and disgust against herself. She was also frightened. Millie had turned away to the window of her dressing-room in the Irving, although there was no view, just thick glass edged by thin flowered cotton curtains and nothing beyond. But Millie had to conceal from Randall Birley, standing awkwardly at the door, the truth about her emotions. The rage and disgust were too raw and could not be admitted at this point. As to the fear, that might be wrongly ascribed to first-night nerves: pride forbade Millie to show more than a conventional apprehension.
Randall came and put an arm around her shoulder. Normally his slightest touch gave Millie a charge; now she felt nothing.
“I hate her,” she was thinking, “Madre is dead and it makes no difference. I still hate her. I always thought I would be free …”
“Darling, she would be very proud of you—” It was not the right thing to say.
“Madre? So proud that she went and killed herself just before my first night?”
Randall Birley tightened the arm. “Darling Mill, you’ve had a horrible, horrible shock, and by the way fuck the first night. Audience, critics, the lot of them. You’re going to be terrific. You are terrific—”
Millie turned to him and saw them together reflected in the long mirror. She noticed that Randall had composed himself into an elegant picture of masculine consolation. In her velvet suit and flared trousers, she herself had the air of a Renaissance boy being comforted by his patron, rather than a late-twentieth-century woman in the arms of her lover.
Suddenly an unbidden image from childhood came to her: her mother, so tiny and feminine, weeping in the arms of a man. It must have been Burgo Smyth; who else would have had Madre in his arms? What scene had she, Millie, interrupted? Had it been a farewell? Or just a common or garden scene? Even as a child, Millie had understood that her mother had a capacity for making scenes. Where on earth did that memory come from? It must have been jolted and stirred from the depths where it had lain for years, by the hideous events of the last twenty-four hours. She put the strange image away from her. Then for the first time it occurred to Millie that Randall, with his height and rugged dark looks resembled Burgo Smyth as she had once known him. Well, it was proverbial that actors and politicians had a lot in common.
“She jumped,” said Millie abruptly. “Madre jumped. She went up to the top of the house some time after we left. And jumped from the old nursery balcony.” She added: “Madre was terrified of heights. And the dark. She hated the nursery and she hated the cellar. She never went into the nursery and she had the cellar shut up.”
Then Millie started to cry in earnest against the gloriously ruffled shirt which Randall wore with his black velvet dinner jacket. “They found her lying in the square. Madre’s last night, my first night, in that order. A dramatic last exit, Olga called it. But then you know what Olga thinks about the theatre.” The last was said half laughing, wholly crying. “Dramatic is not a term of praise with my sister Olga. Nor my brother-in-law Holy Harry.”
Millie could see Olga’s card on a modest bouquet of pink garnet roses among the first-night flowers on her dressing-table. It read (in a florist’s handwriting): “Good luck tonight. Olga and Harry Carter-Fox.” But Olga knew perfectly well the theatrical superstition by which you did not use the words “good luck” in advance, since Millie had often explained it to her. So maybe Olga had brought the bad luck … If so, Millie had to admit that it was bad luck on Olga too. And on Holy Harry.
“My poor Harry! On the eve of this very tricky election!” Olga’s expressed reaction had been quite as unfilial as Millie’s. She had even gone further and muttered something about having to cope as usual while Mille enjoyed the applause on stage. Both sisters understood (if Harry did not) that beneath such comments lay not only a deep shared anger at Madre’s last exit, but a deep shared guilt. And then there was the fear, which they also shared, about what had happened the night before.
Images. Madre’s hysterical weeping. Her screams turning to little animal-like cries as she staggered round the filthy decaying drawing-room on her high heels. At one point she trod on one of those monstrous creepy cats and the animal’s protests had joined her own. Whenever Madre said any words that could be understood, they amounted to the same message: “No, no, I won’t go. This is my house. Burgo’s going to come here and fetch me. He knows where to find me. So I won’t go. Burgo loves me. He’s going to come back.” And so on, as the sisters exchanged glances which were both furious and desperate.
It was Olga who got hold of the pile of Diaries and letter, half in and half out of a Safeways bag under her mother’s chair.
“At least we’re taking these away, Madre. Right now,” she said firmly; it was the voice of a Tory MP’s wife dealing with a constituent. “We’ve had quite enough of that.” Curiously enough, Olga’s dive towards the bag had the effect of calming Lady Imogen, or at least restoring her to some sense of the present.
“You can’t take them. There’s no point. I gave them to someone. I gave them away already. Didn’t I?” Their mother now sounded more confused than hysterical.
“What on earth are you talking about, Madre?” rapped out Millie, too sharply.
Olga signed to her. “Millie, I know how to deal with this,” she said quietly. Once again there was that sisterly sub-text, “Since I always do deal with it.”
“Who came, Madre?” Olga went on. “Everything’s here. We’ll look after everything for you, won’t we, Millie? These boring old letters and things are just a worry for you.”
“That nice girl on television with the pretty-coloured hair. She took it all away and the letters.”
Olga Carter-Fox raised her eyebrows over her mother’s head. Millie responded with a grimace.
“Look, everything is here, Madre,”—Olga at her most reasonable and gentle—“all in this funny bag.” Olga caught sight of a letter on House of Commons writing paper. For a moment she thought it must be from Harry … then she realised her mistake and frowned. At the same time Imogen Swain snatched at the bulging bag.
“You can’t have that. Burgo’s sending someone to pick it up. I think he’s coming himself. Somebody came last night—who came?” She began to drift again.
Millie and Olga left the house a little later—together. Their mother was now sitting quite docilely in the drawing-room, her small figure almost extinguished by the two cats which had settled on top of her. Her last audible words, called after them in that little breathless voice, were: “You must find me somewhere where my girls can be happy.” It never failed to irritate both Olga and Millie that their mother used the term “my girls” for the creatures they referred to as “those bloody cats.” But at least Madre seemed to be reconciled to moving.
“And about time too,” muttered Olga when Millie pointed this out. “You don’t even know about the hairdresser incident the other day! Madre turned up for an appointment at Luciano’s in Curzon Street. Apparently he used to do everyone’s hair in the fifties. Only the trouble is that everyone’s dead, including Luciano. The salon is now a casino. Actually they were extremely sweet as Madre loudly demanded to have her hair washed for an important lunch date, amid the debris of late night gambling.”
They were in the darkened hall. The lights of the chandelier above their heads had fused long ago and Madre, with her ridiculous persecution mania, “They’re going to kill me,” and so forth and so on, had persistently refused to have an electrician in the house unless Olga could find her a female one. This, Olga, with a deep sigh, had put on her list of Things to Do for Madre (T.D.M. as Harry called it). Olga was scrabbling for the key Madre generally kept in a broken Chinese bowl on the hall table. She could not find it. Olga opened the door to the dining-room and put on a light: it was a room unused for years and would, thought Olga, have conveniently done as a dining-room for Miss Havisham. The shaft of light revealed that the bowl, which seemed to have lost yet another piece, was actually empty.
“I thought I saw that key when I came in—”
“Well, we’ve still got one key; you take it,” said Millie. “And listen to me, Olga, it’s not our fault. Will you say that to yourself five times before you go to sleep? Take the Holy One’s mind off the election with your mutterings.”
“Harry says that to me five times a night already.” Olga shuddered as she tried to rub some of the dust from the table off her fingers; something or other had also marked her beige skirt; how typically brilliant of Millie to have worn jeans! “What were we to do? He keeps saying that to me. Put her in a home by force, for Christ’s sake? Well, I did once check up on the procedure, or rather Harry’s secretary did, and frankly Millie, it’s not that easy. If the patient doesn’t agree it can be quite ugly. Look at tonight’s little canter. Harry has to think about his image—our position. If only she’d agreed to have someone to live with her! Plenty of room, to put it mildly. She or they could have lived upstairs and just kept an eye … that sweet little Filipino, three months arranging for it all, and then she was sent packing in three minutes.”
“Olga, listen to me.” Millie turned fiercely to her sister on the doorstep, and spoke with great emphasis. “We’re just not guilty. She’s the guilty one, not us. And lingering on like a dotty, malevolent ghost in that great big house, not selling it, that’s what’s wrong. That’s what’s driven her off her rocker. She could have sold it and given us some money years ago—” The wind raised Millie’s thick black hair as she glared at Olga.
“That’s what Harry says,” said Olga automatically. “Look out, don’t let that cat out. It’s just about to pour with rain.”
“He is not right about his politics but Holy Harry is right about that. Damn her! Damn her to hell! And her cats!” But Millie gently guided the huge soft furry animal back inside the door. “Do you remember when this house was full of flowers?” she added irrelevantly. “What were those flowers that looked so drab and smelled delicious? Tuberoses. Whenever I smell that smell …”
“The drawing-room may have been stuffed with tuberoses once upon a time, I suppose he sent them, but I don’t remember many flowers up in the nursery.” Then Olga patted Millie’s arm; the habit of peace-keeping was too strong in her to be resisted. “You take the dreaded bag, Millie. At least that stuff is waterproof. I don’t want Harry to see it and be driven up the wall.”
“I’ll dash back and lock it up in the theatre. I don’t want Randall to see it either.”
“Millie,” asked Olga slightly timidly, “is he—”
“Yes, absolutely gorgeous. Eat your heart out, sister.” Millie Swain strode off into the shadows of Hippodrome Square as the wind began to toss the tops of the big trees. She was swinging the Safeways bag so energetically that Olga was left wondering fearfully if its contents might spill.
For Millie now, thinking back, none of this made for happy recollection (except perhaps her eventual return to Randall’s Fulham Road flat). And the prospect of the police tomorrow morning was not a particularly cheerful prospect either. Since Millie had spent the night with Randall, she had not been contactable by the police. It was—so far—Olga who had dealt with them although Harry had nobly offered to identify the body officially, thus justifying his reputation for holiness.
But for now, thank God, it was time to work. And it was true that during the next two hours odd, Millie Swain hardly thought about her mother’s death or her own guilt or her own fear; even moments of that troubling anger did not come to disturb her.
“Oblivion, perhaps that’s why I became an actress …” The thought floated by, “Not just to show off as that horrible Nanny Forrester used to say.” Her Viola was maybe just a little more intense than it had been at the Addison. “Swain’s deliciously provocative air of relaxation,” as the Guardian had put it, might have gone missing. (“I predict many swains for Swain”—Daily Mail.) But the first night notoriously did not produce the most relaxed performance.
No, Millie remained curiously and happily cut off in her capsule of Illyria, that is, until she went to Randall’s dressing-room some twenty minutes after the curtain fell. They had exchanged a brief kiss on stage and some members of the audience had clapped. But why not? Randall also kissed his slightly elderly Olivia and his extremely juvenile Maria; he was after all the director as well as the star. But for obvious reasons, Millie had no family to visit her after the show; apart from Kevin Connelly, her agent, and Max Marmont, the producer, with his silent, smiling Japanese wife, there seemed to be a tacit conspiracy to leave her alone with what was presumed to be her grief. It was Randall who telephoned her from his dressing-room at his most expansive: “Darling, come and have a glass of champagne, meet everybody.”
After Millie had pulled on her jeans—she seemed to have lived in them for the last twenty-four hours—she looked desperately for something appropriate to go with them to face the bright world of Randall’s dressing-room. It pleased her sense of irony to find a black silk shirt, actually one of his. It could be said to provide a mourning touch … or even mourning chic if she decided, defiantly, to go to the first-night party.
This mood of detachment came to an end abruptly with the introductions in Randall’s dressing-room. There was indeed a crowd, most of whom Millie recognised: Randall’s agent Betsy Wright, for example, a tiny woman in her fifties who nevertheless managed to give Millie a hug which almost knocked her off her feet, “Ooh, darling, what they do to us. But you were of course magnificent, deeper, rounder, darker, not too dark of course, in a way also lighter …” Betsy Wright babbled on kindly.
But, “You don’t recognise me, Millie,” said the next person she encountered, a blonde young woman in a plain black velvet suit, high-necked white blouse and small pearl earrings. Unlike most of the people in the room, who were drinking champagne, she had a glass of Perrier in her hands. The face was vaguely familiar. Or perhaps the blonde woman’s poise, the artfully plain perfect hairstyle, simply reminded Millie of the sort of career woman who was photographed giving interviews to the newspapers.
“Then, why should you? We used to play together as children. And that’s a long time ago.” The stranger gave a smile showing teeth as perfect as her hairstyle. “Listen, I’m mad about those boots you wore. Are they yours or is that kind of thing specially made for the stage?”
It was Randall, putting his arm around Millie, who performed the introduction. “Darling, have you met my cousin Sarah Smyth?” He then put his other arm around the blonde woman’s black-velvet-clad shoulders. “Sarah Smyth MP. The greatest ornament to the House of Commons, the only real ornament—”
“Don’t be silly, Randall. There aren’t any MPs at present. Parliament’s been dissolved. There’s a government and ministers but no MPs to bother them.” It was said with a smile that made Millie think unpleasantly that Sarah Smyth must have attended the Virginia Bottomley school of charm. “I’m just a candidate at present, a candidate taking a night off to come and support the family on stage.”
Millie felt sick. She was acutely aware that the Safeways bag containing Burgo Smyth’s letters, to say nothing of those Diaries, was in this very theatre. Things got no better when Hattie Vickers poked her head around the door.
“Randall, Millie, see you six o’clock tomorrow.” Then: “Great show. Fabulous reception. Come to think of it, see you all at the Café Royal.”
“Come on Hattie, celebrate.” Randall handed her a glass of champagne. Hattie blushed and shook her head. She had a mass of springy light brown curly hair and a skin almost exactly the same colour. Whatever the genetic mix which had produced Hattie, the effect to Millie’s eyes was far more appealing than Sarah Smyth’s cool Englishness. She hoped Randall agreed with her.
“Later,” said Hattie, with a sidelong glance at Sarah Smyth which seemed to indicate that she shared Millie’s feelings. “I’ve got work to do. And Millie, I locked all that stuff up—” She held up one of the keys on her large jangling key-filled ring.
Millie interrupted her. “Randall, I’m not coming to the Café Royal. You can explain.” She could not resist adding, although it was not necessarily what she wanted just then, “See you later.” As she went, she could hear Betsy Wright’s voice explaining, “The most ghastly thing happened to her only last night, her mother went and …”
Not only had Sarah Smyth not congratulated her on her performance, reflected Millie, unless praise for her boots was intended to be symbolic, but she had not said anything about Madre’s death. Didn’t she know? Surely MPs, or rather candidates, watched the news obsessively? Was the fact that Sarah Smyth did not comment a good sign or a bad sign? All the anger and disgust—and fear—that Millie had experienced, came back.
About the same time as Millie Swain took a taxi back to her Islington flat—it was after all a first night and the weather was still terrible—Olga Carter-Fox was having a family conference. It was a conference of two (occasionally joined by her seven-year-old daughter Elfi, who loved to make appearances to impart tidings of her nightmares). The other person present was the man she too sometimes secretly thought of as Holy Harry, thanks to Millie’s pernicious influence, but was otherwise her husband of ten years, Harry Carter-Fox, Member of Parliament for the West London constituency of Bedford Park in the last three parliaments and now its prospective candidate.
The conference had to be broken off from time to time not only to escort Elfi (“I dreamt I had no Mummy and Daddy”) back to bed, but to watch the news programme Latest. Harry had done a pre-recorded interview on his favourite subject of social policies, on which he held, for his party, strongly liberal views. Every time the presenter showed signs of turning to a new item, the Carter-Foxes turned the sound up hopefully, before turning back to their increasingly agitated conversation.
“We’ve got to do something—wait, Olga, I think this really is it—no, well, dammit, this is getting seriously late, everyone will be going to bed—as I was saying, you should never have let Millie take the Diaries. I’m sorry, darling, but you know what Millie is like. Definitely not to be trusted, and I’m not just referring to her politics, or to the fact that she’s an actress. There’s something terribly unreliable about her quite apart from those two things. Like your mother.”
Momentarily Olga was inclined to defend Millie against the charge of being like Madre but at that instant the unmistakable image of Harry Carter-Fox filled the screen.
“Pensions in a perfect world proliferate,” he began; it was not an ideal sentence for a man who was visibly nervous and had a slight stammer on such occasions. As Harry leant forward gently and revealed the small bald patch in his hair, Olga’s thoughts strayed and went down dark paths. She did after all know what her husband was going to say, having rehearsed it with him at some length. When Burgo Smyth came on the screen just after Harry, looking particularly suave (no perspiration for the Foreign Secretary) it was Olga who snapped the set off.
“Jolly good, darling,” she said, “that showed them all right.” But the sight of Burgo Smyth had soured Harry’s mood once more; he had been unconsciously and rather touchingly smiling at his own face on the screen.
“Olga, we’ve got to do something,” he repeated. “You know, this could be political death for me, absolute ruin to my career, if things get out. Whatever did or did not happen in the Faber Case, that’s thirty years ago. It’s monstrous that one’s reputation should be put on the line now.” Olga noticed that Harry was trembling.
“I’ve done something already and I’ll do something more.” Olga spoke in her calmest voice, the one she had developed to pacify her mother. “There’s no question about it, Harry, you come first.”