Mystical Paths. Susan Howatch
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It was consoling to know that some sons of priests lived even more dangerously than I did.
For a second I remembered my premonition that Dinkie would wind up as a walking corpse, but I blotted that memory right out by repeating my father’s familiar words of comfort: ‘There are many futures and not all of them come true.’ I had long since decided that Christian wasn’t going to die young. That particular premonition had been just a false blip on the screen, a stress reaction after the exceptionally gruesome psychic experience I had suffered minutes earlier.
I began to look forward to seeing him again at Perry’s party.
II
My father said I had to take Martin a small present to signal my thanks for his hospitality so I bought some oranges from a barrow-boy at Waterloo station. Martin, a reformed alcoholic, regarded freshly-squeezed orange juice as a big treat. When I arrived at his flat in Chelsea he had just returned from a rehearsal at the theatre. A revival of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter was due to open in the West End shortly after a successful trial run in the provinces. My father and I had seen the production at the Starbridge Playhouse.
‘Oranges!’ exclaimed Martin as I mutely shoved the bag at him. ‘How clever of you!’
I tramped along behind him into the spare bedroom where the wallpaper, curtains and bedspread all matched. The whole flat had this same manicured, expensive look, conjuring up images of a high-class tart. In the living-room middle-brow books sat on white shelves. Nasty examples of modern art leered from the walls. Signed photographs of show-business luminaries, all professing undying love, were positioned at various strategic points so that it was impossible to look anywhere without seeing a famous face who allegedly adored Martin. Below the middle-brow books were the middle-brow records where the noises of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peggy Lee were lavishly represented. The current copy of Variety lay open on the coffee table. On the desk were scattered provincial press cuttings, all proclaiming how wonderful Martin was in Present Laughter. I wandered around feeling like a creature from another planet and tried to work out how I could stay in my bedroom till it was time to go to the party.
‘Can I have a bath?’ I said in a moment of inspiration.
I soaked and I soaked and I soaked. Eventually Martin called: ‘You haven’t drowned, have you?’ and I had to get out. When I finally reappeared, dressed in my best jeans and my favourite blue shirt, Martin said: ‘A casual party, is it? Whereabouts do you have to go?’
‘Albany.’
This impressed him. Martin, whose mother had been working-class, was a snob. ‘You mean the Albany? Off Piccadilly?’
‘You don’t say “the” Albany. That’s not done. You just say “Albany”,’ I said, very much the son of Anne Darrow, née Barton-Woods, of Starrington Manor.
‘What’s good enough for Oscar Wilde is good enough for me, you little snob – look up the reference in The Importance of being Earnest! Who’s your host?’
‘A guy called Perry Palmer.’
‘Perry Palmer?’ Martin’s face, trained to express every conceivable emotion to every conceivable degree, now registered a profound astonishment. ‘What are you doing going to one of Perry’s parties?’
I was equally astonished. ‘You know him?’
‘Not well, no, but we’ve friends in common – friends in the theatre. How on earth did the two of you meet?’
‘He’s a friend of Christian Aysgarth’s.’
‘Ah yes, the Starbridge connection – all is explained. But nevertheless, how extraordinary! If I were on stage I’d declare in my best sinister voice: “It’s a small world!” and a shiver would sweep through the audience!’
I experienced a moment of amnesia, as so often happens when one’s confused. ‘Have you met any of the Aysgarths?’
‘Almost the whole damned lot, yes – don’t you remember me telling you? When Present Laughter played in Starbridge recently Dean Aysgarth and that fantastically bizarre wife of his gave a party for the cast.’
‘So they did, I remember now. And Christian was there, wasn’t he – he came down specially from Oxford –’
‘And Perry came down specially from London. Tell me, who else is going to this party of his tonight?’
‘Oh, various people I know.’
‘Girls?’
‘You bet.’
‘Thank God!’ said Martin. ‘For one ghastly moment I thought I’d have to come to Albany to chaperone you, and all I want to do after that rehearsal is put my feet up and watch the box.’
‘Are you trying to tell me –’
‘Perry moves in certain circles, yes. God, what a relief it is to live like a monk! I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but when one gets to the advanced age of fifty-eight, the thought of performing in bed as well as on the stage is simply too exhausting to contemplate, and now I find I’m hopelessly hooked on the delights of living alone.’ He laughed before adding: ‘Getting like Dad, aren’t I? No wonder he’s decided I’m a fit person to keep an eye on you when you come trundling up to London! I’ve even started to go to church. They do a first-class show at St Mary’s Bourne Street – brilliant stagecraft enhanced by the English lust for ceremonial! I’m wild about the whole gorgeous circus.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That type of Anglo-Catholic ritualism has always appealed to people like you.’ I stood up. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Well, watch yourself with Perry Palmer,’ said Martin smoothly as the conversation degenerated into a verbal punch-up. ‘Psychics are usually attractive to both sexes. I bet Dad’s had plenty of men in love with him in his time.’
‘The most irritating thing about homosexuals,’ I said, heading for the door, ‘is that they believe everyone’s secretly homosexual. A true triumph of hope over statistics.’
‘That’s a great exit line!’ cried Martin, genuinely amused, but I walked out without looking back.
III
I took the tube to Green Park and wandered down Piccadilly to Albany, that fabulous ex-palace where the waiting-list is about twenty years long and no one gets a ‘set’ of rooms unless they have a personal hotline to a bunch of nobs who appear to be less well-known than the Queen but more influential. How Perry had acquired this flat of his I had no idea. His grandmother was supposed to have been Edward VII’s mistress, but a lot of women were supposed to have been Edward VII’s mistress and presumably not all their grandsons had ended up in Albany. Anyway, there Perry lived in a ground-floor set that faced the Rope Walk, and there was I in the September of 1963 padding past the uniformed flunkey in the grand entrance hall.
Perry was a spy. Now that I had been informed that he was also a homosexual I thought: how typical! Apparently the Foreign Office had learnt nothing from the Burgess and Maclean affair. Then I remembered that it was only rumoured he was a spy; all that was known for certain was that he spoke fluent Russian and held some Foreign Office post which he refused to discuss. Possibly he just translated incoming mail from the Kremlin.
I had been bothered by Martin’s revelations about Perry, but during my journey to Albany I became less bothered and more sceptical. Martin had denied knowing Perry well. It seemed obvious in retrospect that he’d rushed to judgement after seeing Perry carousing with a certain bunch of actors, but just because Perry dabbled in the social side of the acting profession in order to give himself a break from the tight-lipped job at the FO I didn’t have to conclude he had a sex-life, lawful or unlawful. In fact Marina always said Perry was a eunuch. Perhaps he was just undersexed. Certainly I couldn’t see Christian being close friends