Darling Sweetheart (38 page)

‘I know,’ Annalise agreed glumly, ‘exactly what you mean.’

‘Your father never trained; he was the most instinctive actor I’d ever seen. But between engagements, between personalities, he started to become more withdrawn. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even me. He could be the life and soul of the party, but the more time we spent together, the more I realised it wasn’t him. He used his talent to create the illusion of happiness, but when the guests went home, he ceased to exist. I think that acting drained him of his true self.’

That too sounded very familiar to Annalise, but she stayed silent.

‘Then, there were the tantrums. I’d never seen a grown man lose his temper before. About three months after we were married, we played a game of crazy golf in Richmond Park with two other couples, just larking about. We lost, and he smashed these little golf clubs, one by one, screaming and ranting in the middle of the park, with all these people watching! I couldn’t believe it! I remember thinking, Oh my god, I’ve married this man – what have I done? And his temper grew worse the more successful he became. He broke into film, minor parts at first, but suddenly he was sharing studios with some really big names, actors like Alec Guinness, Julie Christie, Terence Stamp – lovely people, but your father felt so intimidated. Or, we’d go out to dinner with some agents or producers and he’d have them all eating out of his hand, but on the way home, he’d say things like, “Did I do all right?” or “What was I like?”, as if the entire
evening had been a performance, which, of course, it was. Sometimes as a joke, he would go to parties in disguise, in full make-up and costume, and pretend to be someone else. He was so good at it, people wouldn’t recognise him, but it backfired terribly one night when a well-known director, not realising he was in the room, said nasty things about the first Fanshawe film, how cheesy it was and all that, and your father was devastated. He was a child, you see – he couldn’t deal with criticism. But the more you bit your tongue around him, the more he got away with, you see?

‘When he started earning serious money, he bought things like fur coats and cars as if they were toys. And I didn’t want fur coats, in fact I hated them. I wouldn’t wear them and he’d get terribly cross. He burned one, once – made me watch, as he set it on fire with a cigarette lighter. Furiously angry, yet laughing at the same time. Then, he’d crawl into a cupboard, eaten by self-pity. The only person who could talk to him when he was like that was his mother, but, you see, I thought it was her fault that he was like that in the first place. I have a theory that after the war an entire generation of men were spoiled by their mothers, as a reaction to the death that had gone before. In a way, that’s what the sixties were all about, all these spoiled little boys acting out their adolescent fantasies and calling it free love. And, of course, we women were expected to play along. But spoiled children only have two modes of behaviour – performing and sulking. Sorry, I really am starting to rave. Thank God, there’s the pub.’

They took a table outside, above a stone slipway. Evelyn ordered a bowl of chowder – Proctor demanded two pints of dark brown beer, which he demolished in quick succession, and a helping of apple crumble. Annalise had a beer too, but sipped it slowly. Evelyn drank tap water.

Two miles away, a black people-carrier crawled past Pittenweem harbour. Frost, Timmins and Rupert sat in the rear, with
Bernstein and Levine up front. Levine drove. Bernstein’s nose was bruised and swollen. Rupert consulted the laptop on his knee, which displayed a detailed aerial view of the village.

‘You’ve got to admire the old doll, going so totally off-grid,’ he remarked. ‘No telephone, no TV, no electricity, no bank account or credit cards, nothing on the electoral register…’

‘Well, thank goodness for traditional, handwritten marriage records.’ Timmins studied the one-sided street. ‘Are we close?’

‘Just up ahead, a place called West Shore. The road ends; we’ll have to walk.’

‘This is nowhere!’ Frost complained. ‘H.E. will kill me if we’ve wasted all this time on a wild goose chase!’

‘Miss Frost,’ Timmins spoke quietly, ‘we’ll get your actress back; it just took a tad longer than usual to pin this Mrs Munroe down.’ He addressed Levine. ‘Stop the car, please.’

‘What?’ Frost looked eagerly around. ‘Do you see them?’

‘No,’ Timmins indicated the parking bay along the sea front, ‘but I do see a camper van with a Capital Radio sticker – that’s a London-only station, in amongst all these Scottish vehicles. Rupert, check that number plate. I want you to stay here with Miss Frost and watch that van. If you see them, ring my mobile. But first, please direct Misters Bernstein and Levine to the rear of the property, so they can prevent anyone from leaving that way.’ He took a leather pouch from the pocket of his grey raincoat and unzipped it. It contained a plastic syringe and a small glass phial. Frost watched as he stuck the syringe into the phial and extracted a clear liquid. He tapped it, squirted a little then placed it carefully on his knee. From his other pocket, he produced a pair of handcuffs. Deftly, he closed one ratchet around his own wrist; the other he left hanging open. ‘They don’t know me,’ he added calmly, so I’ll call to the front door alone.’

Annalise and Evelyn strolled back towards Pittenweem. Proctor walked up ahead.

‘Your father made that first Fanshawe film in 1977,’ Evelyn
recalled, ‘and, after that, things changed very quickly. It was such a sudden, unexpected success that he went from being a modestly well-known actor to an international star within a year. Leon always said the key to those films was their simplicity. Slapstick translates into any language, so they sold worldwide.’

‘Leon?’

‘Leon Miller – he produced the films. Your father hated him.’

‘Yet he kept making more.’

‘Yes.’

‘And in the end, that’s what killed him.’

‘Hmm. You could equally argue that it was your father’s decision to use his own aeroplane to travel to locations. But that was so like him, he loved flying. I remember he bought a beginner’s plane with his first pay cheque from Fanshawe. Kept it at an aerodrome out near Upminster, took lessons, the lot. I suppose planes, cars and yachts are just ultimate boys’ toys. He flew me to France once; he was a really good pilot. It seemed to calm him down. Often he would fly off alone, disappear for days at a time.’

‘But what about you? Did you not want…?’

‘Absolutely,’ she nodded, ‘I would have adored children, but your father said he hadn’t got room in his life for a proper family.’

‘He was right about that.’

‘I sometimes wondered how your mother talked him into it.’

‘Maybe I was an accident.’

Evelyn smiled. ‘Maybe you were deliberate.’

‘Did you ever…?’

‘No. Alastair – my second husband – Alastair and I weren’t able to. We often talked about adopting, but the sea took him, and the heart went out of me for a long time after that.’

‘The sea…
took
him?’

‘Alastair was a fisherman – his boat was lost in the winter of 1994. Occupational hazard,’ she smiled ruefully, ‘but it’s a bit
careless, isn’t it, losing two husbands to the sea?’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, it was a long time ago. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but your father wrote to me when he heard about Alastair and offered to remarry me.’

‘What!’

‘He wanted to come and live here and bring you with him – I think you would have been nine or ten years old at the time.’

‘What… what did you say?’

‘I wrote back and told him that if anything ever happened to Gabriela, I’d gladly take you in. Maybe I should have said yes to the whole idea, but I knew it was just another whim. By that time he was so famous, I think he had vertigo.’ Now her smile was sad. ‘He would sentimentalise the past – repackage the bad memories and have them redelivered as good ones. He wouldn’t have stayed; he’d have treated me the same way he treated your mother, or Monica Goddard, or all his other women. That’s why you never knew your grandparents – he cut them out when he became famous, even his adoring mother, and, of course, after you were born he kept you hidden away in Ireland. Bad for the image, you see. International playboys don’t have families – they change girlfriends, not nappies. I guess Gabriela didn’t see that coming.’

‘You said you introduced them?’

‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘it was all so horribly simple. When he became a star, your father decided that we needed a suitably grand house, so we bought a big old place overlooking the river, across from Kew Gardens. We organised a house-warming party on a lovely summer’s day. Everyone came – there were even a couple of Rolling Stones there, if I remember rightly, and quite a lot of film people. We were all out in the garden, and your father had this thing around women he liked; I recognised it, because he’d done it to me. He would sort of throw himself at them, like a needy child. I hadn’t seen Gabriela for a year or so at that stage.
She was quite a successful model by then; tall enough, you see, she had the legs. I was so very pleased that she’d been able to come, but then, as the evening wore on – everyone was getting fabulously wasted, of course – as the evening wore on, I found your father canoodling with her, right under my very nose! I probably shouldn’t say this, but I expected more from Gabriela – after all, she’d been my friend, not his. But that didn’t stop them. We had a furious row and he threw all this nonsense at me about free love and how nobody owned anybody and all the rest. Then a fortnight later he told me he wanted to live with her instead of me, and that was it!’

‘That’s awful!’

‘All so long ago. What goes around, comes around – I cheated on a lovely boy to be with your father. Take my advice: if you ever meet someone loyal, treasure them above all things.’

Proctor came running around a corner in the path towards them, his arms outstretched.

‘Stop!’ he panted. ‘Don’t move!’

The two women halted, looking on in bafflement as the stuntman bent to catch his breath.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Come up here,’ he gasped, ‘and I’ll show you what’s the matter.’ He gestured at a children’s play park at the top of the headland. Their path ran below it, back into Pittenweem. He beckoned them to follow him to the far side of the park, where he stopped behind some bushes. When they peeked through these, they had a clear view over West Shore, with Evelyn’s house in the middle.

‘Ben,’ Annalise repeated, ‘what on earth are you doing?’

‘Sshhhh!’ he commanded. ‘Watch!’

‘But what are we supposed to be–’

‘You’d make a lousy commando! Just be quiet and–’ but he didn’t need to finish his sentence, because two enormous men dressed in black appeared at the back of the house, as if they
were searching Evelyn’s garden.

‘Bernstein and Levine!’ she cried. ‘What are
they
doing here?’

‘It’s a good thing Emerson’s men are as shite at stakeouts as they are at scrappin’.’

‘Are they friends of yours?’ Evelyn asked.

Proctor laughed. ‘Not exactly, no.’

‘I’m sorry, Evelyn,’ Annalise apologised, ‘but my life has been a bit… complicated, lately.’

‘Is it the police?’

‘They’re something worse,’ Proctor snorted, ‘Americans with more money than sense. Although, having said that, I wonder how they followed us,’ he turned to Annalise, ‘because no one knew we were coming here – not even you!’

Annalise raised Froggy as if to make him speak but Proctor’s hand shot out, squeezing the toy’s face with his fist. He eyeballed her. ‘Before you start with your alter ego not trusting me, think for a second: if I’m with them,’ he nodded at the cottage, ‘then why would I stop you from from going down there?’ Slowly, he withdrew his grasp, expecting a volley of abuse. But instead, Annalise lowered Froggy and spoke in her own voice.

‘So what do we do? Get in the van and go?’

‘Anyone smart enough to have tracked us this quickly has already clocked the van. We can’t risk it.’

‘But I wanted to spend some time with Evelyn! There’s so much I need to talk about!’

‘If we stay here, you’ll be caught.’

‘Evelyn, this producer, this Leon…’

Evelyn had watched their exchange with puzzled anxiety. ‘Miller. Leon Miller.’

‘Is he still alive?’

She shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard otherwise.’

‘Where would I find him? He was there when my father died.’

‘When I knew him, Leon lived in London…’

‘Great,’ Proctor laughed sardonically, ‘back to where we started.’

‘…he had a big house in Clapham. You could try looking him up on that web net thingy.’

‘I feel so awful,’ Annalise took Evelyn’s hand, ‘for crashing in on you like this and bringing those people into your home.’

‘I shall go right down there and give them a piece of my mind!’

‘Actually,’ Proctor intervened, ‘if you could leave them for a while, we could use a head start.’

‘Should I phone the police?’

‘Err… we’d really appreciate it if you didn’t do that either.’

‘Are you two in trouble?’

‘Who isn’t in trouble, these days?’

‘Those men will go away,’ Annalise assured Evelyn, ‘when they realise I’m not here.’

‘Very well, I shall visit a friend, but if they’re not gone by dark, I shall be down with a dozen burly fishermen. What about you? What will you do? Will you be all right?’

‘If anyone asks,’ Proctor smiled, ‘say we’ve gone to the Outer Hebrides.’

Annalise threw herself at Evelyn, hugging her round the neck. ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything.’

Evelyn took her arm. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ She led her off towards the swings and slides. Proctor stood with his arms folded, feigning indifference, but he noticed that Evelyn spoke earnestly to Annalise and that she even patted Froggy, before giving her another hug. She waved after them as they walked across the fields, away from the village towards the main road. Proctor put an extra push in his stride; to his annoyance, Annalise easily kept up with him.

‘So what was that about?’

‘What was what about?’

‘That little tête-à-tête back there.’