Familiar Rooms in Darkness (20 page)

‘I don't understand. What smokescreens? What d'you mean?'

Richard Compton-King gave a long, considering look. His breezy, charming manner had given way to something more serious and thoughtful. ‘Come on, you're his biographer, surely you know.'

Adam shook his head.

‘Astonishing.' Compton-King paused contemplatively, turning his champagne glass slowly with long fingers. ‘It always surprised me it never came up before. You know, profiles of Harry, stuff written about him when he was up for those big prizes. I knew. Plenty of people knew. Maybe it was because they were all part of that strange charmed circle. People were far kinder back then, you know. Discreet, tactful. Understanding.' He drank off his champagne and poured them both some more.

For a few seconds Adam was too astonished to say anything. He picked up his glass and took a couple of steadying gulps. ‘You're saying Harry was
gay
?' This, if true, was going to make something very big of the biography. He felt momentarily dizzy.

Compton-King lifted his chin and looked at Adam pensively. ‘Yes – though not entirely. Lots of people like that back then. I don't know whether he and Cecile strictly had what you would call
un mariage blanc
… but I think it was a form of protection. That's what really got Joe – he hated the social taboos that forced people into those corners. Couldn't decide whether Harry was giving
in to conventionality, or cocking a snook at it. He and Harry argued about it a good deal. In a friendly kind of way. Joe didn't see why homosexuality had to be regarded as outcast and criminal, thought everything Harry did reinforced that. Of course, that was why Joe behaved as he did, all that cottaging, that promiscuity. Said that it was a way of rejecting prescribed patterns of sex. “Sex is the only way to infuriate them,” he used to say. Hated the idea of the well-adjusted homosexual, saw tolerance as a repressive concept.'

Adam was working to keep up with this. Compton-King was more than just an old pop-group manager and hustler, clearly. Behind the lazy, lightweight façade lay a busy intellect. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it had a perverse effect on him, making him serious, instead of the other way round. Whatever, Compton-King was turning out to be the best thing that had happened to Adam since George Meacher. If any fleeting misgivings struck him concerning the rest of the Day family, Adam stifled them for the time being, preoccupied with the significance of what he was hearing.

‘Joe would go on at Harry about his hypocrisy – Harry would simply point to Joe's relationship with Halliwell and tell Joe he was trapped in his own homosexual marriage, but without any of the tax benefits.' Compton-King grinned. ‘Give him his due, Joe was generous enough to accept the truth of that. Which was why he envied the way Harry had arranged his life. Joe saw Harry as having class. It was something Harry tried to disguise, or at any rate downplay in the old quest to be a social dramatist, but it shone through, and Joe liked that. He
wanted to move easily through the social milieu like Harry. Harry was quite content to manipulate the truth of his own life, accept conventions and work within them. He wasn't angry, like Joe. For all the social realism of his plays, he wasn't setting out to change the world. It was Joe who remained true to himself – the ultimate bedsitter playwright.'

‘But you said yourself that Harry's plays were subversive. He was one of the great social realists. He was ground-breaking, surely.'

‘No. He was simply doing what a great many people, including myself, did in the sixties.' Compton-King gave Adam a kind smile. ‘He was cashing in.' He emptied the dregs of the first bottle into Adam's glass and popped another. Adam allowed his glass to be refilled without demur. He was feeling very good indeed.

‘Mind if I have some more of this cheese?' he asked.

‘Go ahead. I'll get Shona to bring out those strawberries.' He hauled his lanky frame from the chair and flapped off into the house.

Adam put his recorder on pause and sat in a state of incredulity. Unlike with the Meacher situation, he didn't doubt one word of what Compton-King had told him. But how was it that, over all the years, not so much as a hint of any sexual scandal concerning Harry had ever surfaced? How had he managed to conduct himself as a very public personality without scraps of truth emerging, former lovers cashing in, some resourceful journalist getting wind of something?

He asked Compton-King this when he returned. Compton-King, who had brought out a second bottle
of champagne, filled Adam's glass, despite his protests, and settled himself back in his chair. Adam flicked on his tape recorder.

‘Well, now, to answer that one, you have to understand the way things were back then. Homosexuality? Utterly beyond the pale. Till they changed the law in the late sixties, if you were queer you could be sent to prison for life. Utterly appalling, wrecked people's lives and careers…' Shona appeared with a bowl of strawberries and set them down. Compton-King stretched out a large hand and picked up a few, and began to bite them off at the base of their stalks with leonine teeth. Adam helped himself to a handful, and found himself wondering whether Compton-King himself was gay. It was hard to tell.

Compton-King chucked the spent hulls of his strawberries on to a plate and wiped his hands together. ‘So–' He picked up the bottle and poured out yet more champagne. ‘–put Harry in that environment. Think of him – young man in Soho in the late fifties. Hangs around certain kinds of bars and clubs. Plenty of them in Soho. Gets drawn into the homosexual scene, as can happen. Few years later, turns into an established playwright, with a reputation to protect.' Compton-King shrugged. ‘As I recall, Harry had girlfriends as well, but no matter how half-hearted a homosexual you might be in those days, you stood to lose everything – career, reputation, family, liberty – if you got caught. Harry was probably just one of any number who got married and kept up an appearance of respectability. Can't say I ever blamed him, even if Joe did.'

‘But d'you think Cecile realized? I mean, do you think when they got married that she knew?' asked Adam wonderingly.

‘I'm pretty sure she did.' Compton-King stretched out his legs, rose and cast aside his towelling robe. ‘Time for a swim.'

He strolled to the edge of the pool, contemplated the water, and then hurled himself in with a tremendous, splashing dive. Adam wiped drops of water from his face and knocked back the remains of his champagne. Through a mild haze of drunkenness crept a realization of the problems which these momentous revelations raised. This would all require careful investigation, and further conversation with Compton-King. This was something no one had ever known about Harry Day, and if they had, it had certainly never been made public before. The main problem lay with Cecile. It wasn't the kind of thing one could just go ahead and publish, without consulting her. Good manners forbade it, and besides, Bella might never speak to him again. Bella… There lay problem number two… But how could he raise the subject with Cecile? What if she had never known?

‘Come on, have a dip,' called Compton-King, surfacing at the side, his long hair streaming down his back.

‘I haven't got anything. Trunks, I mean,' said Adam uncertainly.

‘Oh God, you're not at your local swimming pool, you know. Come in with nothing on, as far as I'm concerned.' He plunged back into the water. Again, Adam wondered uneasily if Compton-King
was
gay. But, God, it was hot, and a swim felt like just the thing to clear the champagne
muzziness from his head. How could he have let himself sit here and drink an entire bottle of champagne in under an hour? Chances were he'd be incapable of swimming. Still… He got up and divested himself of socks, shoes, trousers and shirt, leaving on his boxer shorts. Taking a deep breath, he dived in.

Adam woke up on the long leather sofa in Richard Compton-King's office three hours later. He recalled lying down there, a towel wrapped round his waist, but he had no recollection of falling asleep. He must have closed his eyes while Compton-King had been cataloguing his successes and failures in the music business by reference to the various gold and platinum discs which hung on his office walls, and the champagne and sun and swimming pool had done the rest. He passed a hand over his face. His head ached faintly, and his mouth tasted unpleasantly of stale wine. He glanced at his watch, alarmed to see how much time had passed. He got up, the towel and boxer shorts unpleasantly clammy against his thighs. He went to the door, shivering, and looked uncertainly up and down the passage which ran past the office, then made his way out to the sunlit silence of the swimming pool. His clothes still lay on the chair where he had dropped them. On the table the shambles of the champagne lunch remained untouched.

As he finished dressing, Richard Compton-King came out, now fully clad in pressed chinos and a blue open-necked shirt. He looked remarkably fresh and sober for someone who had drunk as much as he had. Maybe that was an average lunch for Compton-King.

‘Feel better for your nap?'

‘I'm really sorry – it must have been the sun. You should have woken me up.'

‘Nonsense. At least now you're more or less fit to drive. Coffee before you go? I'm on my way out, but Shona will make you some.'

‘No, thanks all the same.' Adam picked up his tape machine from the table and put it in his pocket. ‘I'd best be getting back. Look–' He paused uncertainly. ‘When I came here today, I hadn't expected any of what you told me. As you can imagine, it's very important for my book. Would you be prepared to talk to me again, elaborate on things?'

‘Of course. Don't know how reliable my memory is for detail, mind you.'

Adam stretched out his hand and Compton-King shook it. ‘Thanks for lunch. I'll give you a call in the next few days.'

Compton-King kept hold of Adam's hand for a few seconds, the pressure firm and warm. ‘Do that. I would actually love to see you again.'

By the time Adam got back to Baron's Court it was nearly half five, and he would have given anything for an evening of peace and solitude in which to shake off his hangover, listen to the tape, and consider carefully where he went from here. He hoped that Megan had gone off for a drink with friends after work, as she occasionally did, and he would have the flat to himself. But no – there was Megan's VW parked across the road under the plane trees.

In the kitchen, Megan was unpacking bags of groceries. ‘I'm going to make us a fabulous supper,' she said cheerfully. She'd been watching Jamie Oliver every week on television for the past month. ‘I hope you're hungry.'

Feeling quite unreasonably irritated, Adam replied, ‘I'm not, to be honest.' It was true. He had no wish to eat anything at all. The sun and champagne had left him with a feeling of malaise. Never before had he wanted so badly to have the place to himself.

Megan looked at him. ‘But I've bought all this stuff…'

‘I've had a heavy day.' He was aware that his tone was unfriendly, and Megan caught this.

‘Heavy lunch, more like. Been out boozing with Giles?' Megan started to slam things into the fridge.

‘Oh, get off my case! I've been working, as it happens. And I'm going to spend the rest of the evening doing the same. I'd be grateful if you didn't disturb me.'

He went into the bedroom and flung up the sash window. The air in the room was stale, touched with the cloying note of some perfume of Megan's, which fiercely and unaccountably enraged him. He took his tape machine from his pocket and went into his study, closing the door behind him.

An hour and a half later, he emerged to ask Megan to turn down the hi-fi. This escalated into a blazing row, which ended with Megan in tears, and Adam expressing a contrition he did not feel. When he came to bed around midnight, Megan was asleep, for which he was grateful. He crept beneath the duvet, pondering the events of the day. He had listened twice to the tape of his conversation with Compton-King, typing it up on the computer. He
lay in the dark for a long time, thinking, and the last thing he decided before he fell asleep was that, before doing anything else, he would have to speak to Cecile.

Despite his resolve, Adam felt some trepidation when he rang Cecile the next morning. Her manner on the telephone was formal, restrained, and almost a little fearful. She could, he knew, have resisted any further intrusion entirely, but she agreed to see him – indeed, she suggested he come round that very afternoon. So after lunch he drove to Dulwich.

‘How are you?' asked Adam, as she led him through to the same room where they had talked before.

‘Oh, quite well, thank you. I've been recording
A Book at Bedtime
for the BBC, and what with making the bridesmaids' dresses for the wedding, and so on, I've really been very busy…'

She closed the door and turned to face him. Adam realized that he couldn't allow politeness to escalate to further, dizzying heights of unreality. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I feel I owe you some kind of apology. I want you to know that I had no intention of hurting anyone in your family. I simply found certain things out, and the rest took its course.'

‘Yes, well… Perhaps it was only to be expected.' Cecile gestured for him to sit down. Her manner was still courteous and controlled. ‘I suppose in some strange way I'm rather grateful to you for what has happened. I had thought, at first, that it was all going to be quite
cataclysmic, the end of everything good between Bella and Charlie and myself. Of course, I'm still not sure quite how they will feel in the long run…' Her eyes moistened with quick tears.

‘They both love you very much. Nothing that has happened will change that.'

She nodded swiftly. ‘No, I realize that. I'm just not sure if the worst has passed yet. I don't know how long it takes to work these things out. It's my fault for not telling them a long time ago. I know that.' She sat down in a chair opposite Adam. ‘You know that Bella went to see the Kinleys?'