'It's a very strange letter,' Nick said, reading it again. ' "Reassure me we did the right thing? Sometimes at night I have panic attacks." It's almost like it's in code. Have you got any ideas?'
Magnus shook his head and picked up a separate piece of paper on which Mel had written a few notes. 'Long-term close friendship' he read. 'Plotting together? Maybe joint blackmail. Is "M" Miles or Magnus? Why would her hair be like steel wool?' Magnus put down the notes and looked at his son. 'It seems that Mel was as puzzled as we are. She's right about the long-term close friendship: Bonny and Ellie were practically joined at the hip. But I don't think Mel knows who this letter's from. Now that's really odd. Back in the fifties there were huge queues outside every cinema to see Helena's films. Is it possible that Bonny didn't ever tell Mel that such a famous actress was her best friend? Bonny boasted about everything!'
'They must have fallen out,' Nick said. 'I wonder why?'
'Jealousy, I expect,' Magnus said thoughtfully. 'Maybe once Bonny saw Ellie's name up in lights it got too much for her.'
'Tell me about Ellie? What she was like?'
'She and Bonny were chalk and cheese,' Magnus smiled as he remembered. 'Ellie was a giver, Bonny a taker. It was an unlikely friendship really. Ellie's father died before she was born and she was brought up in the East End of London. Her mother was a dresser in a theatre, but she was killed in the Blitz. According to Bonny the poor girl had a terrible time during the war – she went to live with an aunt who was a drunk and virtually supported the woman until she too was hurt in an air raid. Oddly enough the aunt died later on the same night I first met the girls. Ellie was devastated: whatever her aunt had been, she adored her.'
'You really liked her, didn't you?' Nick could hear a warmth in his father's voice, different from the way he spoke about Bonny.
'Yes, I did,' Magnus sighed deeply. 'Sometimes I was tempted to tell her to split from Bonny, that she was wasting her talent. You see Bonny didn't share her friend's commitment to the stage and Ellie was a brilliant comic actress.'
'Did she ever get married? I don't think I ever read about her private life.'
Magnus shook his head. 'No, well, at least not unless that's the reason why she faded from the public view. Back when I knew her she had an actor friend called Edward, but she never seemed very interested in love and romance. Bonny claimed she still held a torch for a young fireman she'd met during the war. She had to choose between marrying him and her career on the stage apparently.'
'Do you know this chap Edward's surname?'
'No. I never met him, I only remember his name because Bonny was always moaning about him. He was in the first show they did together, and then the three of them went on tour. Bonny loathed him.'
'Why?'
Magnus smiled. 'Well you couldn't take anything Bonny said as fact! She claimed he was creepy, queer, a bit of an aristocrat, and that he was obsessed by Ellie. I saw a few photos – very good-looking, blond, Nordic type. Ellie spent a great deal of time with him.'
'Did he split up their double act?'
'Oh no,' Magnus said. 'I think it was really Ellie getting the part in
Oklahoma
and perhaps Bonny meeting John Norton which did it. And judging from that letter there where no hard feelings on either side about that. The following year, 1950,
Soho
was made, and Helena Forester took England by storm.'
Nick had seen this classic film several times and loved it: the story of a young girl who got caught up in the seamier side of war-time London. Many critics claimed that British film makers should have fought tooth and nail to keep such a fine actress working in England. The glossy musical comedies she made in Hollywood afterwards were trashy compared with
Soho.
'Did Mel say anything about this letter?' Nick asked, waving the sheet of blue notepaper.
'No, but then she didn't have time to tell me about any of them. She was going to come back upstairs later that evening. But of course I had the stroke.'
'So you don't know if she's already checked out Sir Miles and Jack Easton?'
'No. That makes it doubly difficult doesn't it?'
Nick sat for a moment in silence, still with the letter from Helena Forester in his hands. He had hoped the file might also have had letters to Mel in it. It was disappointing to find it only contained things relating to Bonny.
'Dad,' he said eventually. 'There's something very weird about all of this. What would you say to me going to see this chap Jack Easton and Sir Miles Hamilton to see if they can throw any light on it?'
'I just wish I were fit enough to go myself,' Magnus said with a wry smile. 'But you'll have to be very tactful, particularly with Sir Miles. Lady Hamilton died some years ago, but men of his position and age are notoriously tetchy.'
Nick smiled. 1 can be the soul of discretion when I need to be. I think I should go down to Rye too, and find out exactly what happened when Bonny killed herself.'
'When do you want to go?' Magnus asked.
'I can't till after New Year,' Nick said. 'There's too much going on here until then and besides you need help until you can get about in that chair. But will you be able to manage without me then?'
Magnus cuffed his son's head playfully and smiled. 'Of course I will. One less wet nurse around me will be a relief. God I miss Mel, son, if she were here now she'd be making me laugh, not pandering to me as if I were senile.'
'I'll get her back,' Nick said softly. 'Just you wait.'
On 3 January Nick left Oaklands. Magnus waved goodbye from the side window in his sitting room until all that was left of the red MG was a puff of grey exhaust fumes amongst the trees on the drive. A tear trickled down his cheek as he turned his wheelchair away from the window and moved it back to the fire.
Christmas had been a very sad time for him: a glimpse of what old age and infirmity meant for many people. Alone in his room, the sounds of jollity wafted up to him from the bar and restaurant, cutting him off from all he'd worked for, reminding him relentlessly of happier times.
When Ruth was alive Christmas had been magical. She loved to give people surprises: she even filled little felt stockings for each of the guests, not to mention masterminding all the children's presents, dressing the tree, putting up the decorations and organising just about everything else. Anyone who stayed here at Christmas became part of the family for the day. Somehow she managed to balance being the perfect hostess with her role as mother and wife without ever looking harassed. The lunch often went on for hours, the children slipping away, leaving the adults to lazily talk and drink in peace.
But since she died Christmas at Oaklands had become much like any other hotel: individual tables for each party of guests at lunch, the staff keeping an attentive and polite distance. Magnus and any of his family who came to stay ate their lunch down in the kitchen once the guests had retired to the drawing room. Magnus wished he could blame someone else for this change in the arrangements, but the truth of the matter was that he had neither the heart, nor the natural warmth that Ruth had, to bring ten or twelve strangers together with his family and make every single one of them feel special and wanted.
Nick had offered to help Magnus downstairs for lunch on Christmas Day, but he'd declined the offer. It was enough for him to share a special breakfast upstairs with Nick, and later to overhear him being the perfect host in his father's place.
Magnus had often felt guilty that he loved this child so much more than the other two. But during the long hours alone this Christmas he had come to understand why. Nick needed him more than his other two children.
On the face of it, Nick was blessed with far more than either Sophie or Stephen. He had boundless charm, he was handsome and amusing, and people took to him immediately. He had never needed to learn how to win friends. He had inherited the best features from each of his parents: Ruth's straight classic nose and generous mouth, Magnus's strong bone structure and height. Stephen had Ruth's short stockiness, but his father's craggy features, while Sophie was a throwback to her grandmother with the same tight mouth and pinched nose.
Magnus didn't feel responsible for either Stephen's or Sophie's failings: they'd had an idyllic childhood and they were grown up by the time Ruth died. She had once commented, 'Magnus, they are true Yorkshire Osbournes. They won't ever embarrass us or behave recklessly. Perhaps we should be grateful they are intelligent and steady instead of worrying about them being so dour.'
But Magnus did hold himself responsible for Nick's failings. When Ruth had died he'd been so immersed in his own grief he forgot his youngest son was still just a child.
'You should have got him home from school well before she died,' he murmured to himself. 'What sort of father leaves it to a headmaster to break that sort of news? He was only thirteen and you expected him to take it like a man!'
He sighed deeply, reaching over to pull out a scrapbook from his bookshelf. It was the only effort he'd made to replace the kind of special attention Ruth gave all her children: a collection of pictures, school reports, letters and later reviews.
He turned the pages slowly, sadly remembering other stories behind the snapshots. Nick in France, just a month after Ruth's death: a skinny tall boy, wearing only a pair of shorts, his hair bleached white by the sun. But Magnus had spent that holiday sitting in a bar drinking away his sorrows instead of swimming with his son. His first lead role in a school production of
Hamlet;
but Magnus hadn't been there to see it. Two years later a snap of him winning the cup at school for all-round sportsmanship: taller and more muscular now, his face showing every sign of the handsome adult he was to become, happy that day because Magnus was there to share his moment of glory. There were so many school pictures: cricket captain, rugby, swimming, athletics. Back then Magnus had been so proud of his son he overlooked the abysmal academic record and the master's strong hints that he was too arrogant for his own good.
'What happened to you?' he asked as he picked up a picture of Belinda, a girl with long blonde hair, a big bust and a sweet innocent face. He had only met her once, when Nick brought her here to Oaklands for the weekend. They had been engaged then, and though Magnus hadn't been delighted about that as they were so young, he had liked the girl very much. Nick never said why it ended; perhaps he just lost interest once he thought he was going to be a big star. Magnus wished he'd made a point of asking Nick what happened.
He turned to the glossy, moody studio pictures taken for the promotion of
Hunnicroft Estate.
Surly and aggressive in black leather, Nick sat astride a motorbike, stripped to the waist in torn dirty jeans. Then came the newspaper cuttings hailing him as the new James Dean.
There was a big gap in the book after the television series was axed. There had been letters from him during that time, but only requests for money. Magnus had kept the two lines about a court appearance and a fine for dangerous driving, but he'd never stuck it in.
'Why didn't you go up to London to see what was going on?' he asked himself. 'Or was it because you were afraid?'
Ruth would have known what to do, but Magnus for all his worldliness had looked the other way.
Yet he loved the boy. It was Nick's face he'd wanted to see, Nick's voice he'd wanted to hear. Nick was Magnus as a boy, Ruth as a young bride: the sunny, happy little boy whose presence ousted memories of Bonny and revived his love for Ruth, giving them both the happiest years of their marriage.
And now he was going off like a knight to the Crusades to discover the truth about his father's old mistress!
Magnus put the scrapbook back on the shelf, overwhelmed for a moment by shame.
'If he can do that for you, the least you can do is make yourself walk again,' he told himself fiercely. 'Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get out of this chair.'
He wheeled himself over to the window, put the brake on, then reaching out for the windowsill with his good hand, hauled himself up onto his feet. His left leg wobbled, but by taking most of his weight on the right foot he managed to swing his left foot forward, then support himself to move the right leg.
'You can do it,' he said, thrilled just to be upright. 'One step at a time and willpower, that's all it takes.
At eight thirty in the evening, with a gale force wind blowing straight off the sea, Littlehampton was deserted.
Nick smiled engagingly at the dark-haired woman behind the bar in the Kings Head. 'A pint of best please – and would you like something for yourself?'
Littlehampton was one of the dreariest towns Nick had ever seen. He had no wish to linger here any longer than was absolutely necessary. He had found a room in a small bed and breakfast, and eaten a greasy hamburger and chips. Now he hoped to get some help in finding Jack Easton.
'Well, thank you very much,' the barmaid smiled back at him. 'I'll have a half if that's okay.'
'It's a wild night out there,' Nick said. He glanced round the bar. There were only eight customers in all, three of them old men playing cards in the corner. 'First time I've been to Little-hampton – perhaps I should've waited for the summer.'
'I prefer the winter myself,' she said as she pulled his pint. 'It's packed out in summer. They steal the glasses, make a mess in the toilets and we're run off our feet. Where do you come from then?'
Nick could tell that she fancied him: she looked like the type who had a dull husband and a couple of kids at home and saw her work in the bar as a diversion. She was an attractive thirty-something, a bit overweight and overly made-up, but the kind a lonely commercial traveller away from home would make a beeline for.
'From Bath,' he replied, leaning towards her over the bar. 'It's a bit of a nightmare there too in the summer. We don't get many hooligans, but there's hordes of foreign tourists packing the streets, hogging all the seats in restaurants, and creating queues in all the shops.'