Carnforth's Creation (18 page)

‘I said that?’ muttered Paul, staring at his hand.

‘
And
how
… like Fitzgerald in the Twenties, getting it over so clear he ends up
being
the goddam mood …’

A faint smile from Paul. ‘What did we end up doing?’

Outside the crowd notched a new high in decibels. ‘What did we do?’ gasped Roy, as though not believing what he’d heard. ‘We gave pop
class,
that’s what we did. And a fuck’s sight more of it than those groovy dope-heads deserve.’

Matthew told the cameraman to cut. Roy jumped up. ‘Whydya do that? Cos I’m lip-reading his words?’ He
advanced
on the crew. ‘Well I’m Mr Big now, and you can get yer junk outer here before I smash it.’

Matthew looked enquiringly at Paul, who said quietly, ‘Why not do what the man says?’

As the crew carted out its gear, Major Bourne came in, his tweed jacket ripped; a livid bruise on his forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Carnforth … This can’t go on. ‘His voice shook
with shock and emotion. ‘Unless you agree to open the gates, someone’ll get killed out there.’

‘Can’t do it till Roy’s on stage, Freddy,’ said Paul.

‘Let’s go,’ announced Roy, heading for the door. He heard Paul questioning his quailing agent. A clear-cut situation. Hundreds of lads from villages roundabout had turned up wanting to pay, but had been stopped and thumped by city kids, who’d bought dud tickets and couldn’t afford to replace them with the real thing. Jealousy, frustration, violence …

‘An ugly business … very ugly,’ muttered the old soldier, as the cameraman crammed in a fresh mag and the recordist said, ‘Got ’im on sound, Chris.’

‘What are you hangin’ around for?’ asked Roy, pushing past them. ‘Might miss a murder.’ The camera, and a hand-held battery light, swung round on him. ‘No second chances,’ he snapped, ‘got work to do.’

*

Bouncing along a narrow farm track in the Bedford with Paul and three security men, Roy asked about the height of the stage, how long the lights would be out before he appeared, when his group had arrived; anything and everything except what would happen when several thousand fans who loathed each other’s guts were allowed to mingle with a vast
uncertain-tempered
crowd. Would the hate, infecting a few, spread like gangrene to the rest? In the critical seconds after the lights flicked on, would he be able to seize control? Grab it before the ticket-holding majority realized thousands of new arrivals hadn’t paid a cent? And if he failed … if they stormed the stage?

Every time the truck’s wheels hit a rut, Paul’s face
contorted
with pain. ‘You frightened?’ he asked at last.

Roy licked bone-dry lips. ‘I’m not goin’ to the fuckin’ guillotine. Course I’m scared.’

‘They mustn’t sense it.’

‘You don’t say.’

The driver swung into the park and accelerated. About twenty yards from the backstage enclosure, the wheels sank into the mud, and went on sinking as they spun round.
Outside, milling kids had no idea who was inside; not yet.

Crouched down in the back, waiting for the driver to fetch more heavies from the enclosure, Roy turned to Paul. ‘Must be pretty weird … waitin’ to be crunched by your own creation.’

*

From the moment the music had started, Eleanor had
recognized
the futility of trying to keep in touch with her people by using whistles, shouts, or any other sounds. The din coming from the coffin-like boxes on the stage had been loud enough to rattle the windows at the back of the house, and be heard over a mile away. Certain that the garden perimeter was safe, she had taken herself off to the tower at midday; while daylight lasted, it afforded the best view of the wall along the Frimpton–Belstead road. After dark she had sent the entire outside staff to positions along the wall, from which flashlight signals could be seen from the gatehouse. Given an SOS she would then set off the fire-alarm to summon all other estate volunteers to the threatened area.

Whatever might happen in the park or on the road, Eleanor held to her determination to concentrate only on the defence of house and gardens. As dusk came on and she heard that fights were breaking out between local boys and ‘visitors’, she felt sick and saddened that Paul should have brought this on those whose interests should have been his own. But she did not think of short-term consequences. In fact it occurred to nobody as likely that if people who knew the area well were driven back from the most obvious points of access, they might be willing to trudge many miles across country to gain their objective. Eleanor had dismissed this idea days ago, partly because so little could be done about it, and partly because she had never really supposed country people would be prepared to trespass en masse for the sake of a pop concert. Had such thoughts taken serious root, two others would certainly have followed: that given a local lead, outsiders might recognize a promising idea; and, if coming through the arboretum (instead of the home farm), they would undoubtedly try to reach the park through the gardens.

About half-an-hour after twilight dimmed to proper
darkness
, there was a longer than usual interval between groups. This was accompanied by an eery drop in the main crowd’s familiar noise-level, and a rising clamour from outside the gates. Then (probably another power failure) the lights in the park went out, and, like a waking giant, the crowd began to grunt and roar. Only minutes after the loss of the lights, Eleanor saw a clear signal being flashed to her, not from the wall, but from much closer to the house. A second signal, not far from the first, decided her. As the alarm bells rang out, she ran down the twisting stairs to begin an hour she would look back on as the worst of her life.

*

In a tent directly behind the stage, Roy, Paul, and members of the group waited tensely. After their frantic struggle to reach the backstage enclosure, nobody who had been in the truck was under any illusions about an easy ride ahead. While the group tuned-up, Roy began jumping and bending, loosening muscles; doing what he could to prepare himself. Still pitch darkness outside. Paul was arguing with a security man who had said the stage was too low and ought to have had more crash barriers immediately in front.

‘What we gotta know,’ the man went on belligerently, ‘is how many of us you want on stage … Like if one cat from the audience gets up there and stays, we might as well …’

‘He’s got to be seen,’ said Paul sharply, ‘so don’t crowd him.’

‘If
we
don’t, there’s plenty of others will.’

White-faced Roy shouted at him to keep quiet; that he’d rather have no protection on stage than heavies aggravating the crowd.

‘You want security, man, or dontcha?’

‘Just stop’em climbin’ on the speakers, okay?’

Roy closed his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Now get this right,’ he heard Paul saying, ‘you radio the gate when he’s half-way into the first number …’ After that, time racing; guards and aides around him and the group in a tight cordon. All of them blundering up the steps in the dark; roadies
bumping around plugging in the groups’ leads. Roy held himself back ten feet from the mike, ready for the lights to trigger his movements.

Waiting for the lights, Paul had moved stage left, and was looking down into the crowd over some of the smaller amps. Sensing activity on stage, there was a lot of pushing and shoving, which was panicking people being pushed up against the crash barriers beneath the stage. Some slid under them, followed by others, so that soon the whole area immediately below was filled. As he wondered about the construction of the supports, the upturned faces were frozen in the flood of light that drenched the stage. He turned and saw Roy spring towards the mike, his black and gold costume flashing; and then he felt the stage move. If the stillness caused by the sudden blaze of light were succeeded by frenzy, the whole stage could keel over on to the crowd. Only seconds left for action.

‘Fellers, fellers,’ he heard Roy calmly at the mike, ‘I feel the earth move, but uh that’s not why we’re here. Couldyer step back from the stage … I was gonna sing
Riding
a
Cloud
with
Me,
but let’s keep one foot on the ground, huh …’ He whipped the mike from the stand and pushed aside a security man, ‘Hey, hey … you cats at the back, give these people space to move back. I wanna sing to yer so don’ take too long.’ He moved right to the edge, making slow sweeping movements with his arms. No response visible; the stage still rocking, but Roy’s voice no less confident and warm, ‘This is great, you’re doing fine back there. I think we’re almost cool now. Let’s give ourselves a few seconds to catch our breath, and then we can groove …’ Hands on hips, Roy whistled a few bars of
Going
Nowhere
; then what Paul had never thought to see: the beginnings of movement way back in the crowd, ripples spreading right through it. When every
instinct
would have been to press forward, one small figure in fancy dress, with nothing but his voice had averted
catastrophe
.

As the movement reached the front, security men slipped
down into the void. Some pushing developed again, Roy blew into the mike, ‘You saw those guys go down? I wancher to know they’re fragile, so don’t hurt ’em … Okay?’ He moved back centre stage, and the band kicked into
Getting
Clever.

And there it was, control, performer’s magic; then the song itself, jaunty, sly, but irresistibly cheerful, winning them round, even those most inclined to sneer at gloss and finish. As Roy jinked and capered round the mike, Paul could hardly credit what his senses told him: that in spite of everything, the mood had changed, and somehow, they were going to have a party.

When the crowd erupted in applause, Paul’s personal tribute was to be so caught up in Roy’s performance that, for a moment, he raised his swollen hand and tried to clap.

*

At first she told herself there would not be many: a dozen or fewer. But long before she reached the spot the signals had come from, she knew better. Dark shapes everywhere, on the terraces, in the Statue Walk, ducking under pergolas, stumbling down the sloping rock garden. A hundred, two hundred, Eleanor couldn’t tell. The park was still in
darkness
, but as the lights came on, greater urgency seemed to grip the trespassers, as lemming-like, they crashed on down towards unseen barriers they would never get past.

Her thought then had been a megaphone; with no music coming from the park, some of them might listen if told to turn back. But the opportunity was lost as the music started again – as if to mock her, the song:
Getting
Clever.

Then suddenly she remembered the ditch filled with barbed-wire below the ha-ha. They would see the park, the lights, hear Roy singing. Both hands shot to her mouth as she imagined them jumping into what they would think a
harmless
hollow; others would be following, landing on top of one another … If trying to climb up from the park, nobody would have given it a second try.

Lights approaching: an under-gardener (Phelps,
Hanson
?) and two foresters she didn’t know. ‘The ha-ha,’ she gasped, ‘get down there, quick.’

The chauffeur and a cowman from the farm were there before them, one waving his torch and shouting to the approaching fans to warn them, the other comforting a youth spreadeagled on the wire.

‘A ladder,’ Eleanor sobbed, ‘and boards …’

The drop was too deep to pull him up, and the danger of tearing his flesh too great.

‘Everyone must be down here,’ she shouted, watching the torches fan out along the brink of the hundred yard ditch. The boy was moaning and crying, his voice rising above the song:

‘Whose bright idea was this stuff?’ she heard the choked voice of Sandford, her chauffeur. Eleanor turned and ran.

Still they were coming; most of them turning when they saw the torches, seeking another way. Eleanor blundered along the line of the beech hedge: fifteen feet high and made impenetrable by wire filling every gap. She could hear shouts coming from the direction of the Topiary Garden. Barriers designed to keep trouble out were now penning it in, causing rage and frustration. Where the corrugated-iron fencing began, she found the estate carpenter, and a maintenance man, working to open an exit with metal-cutters and a sledge-hammer. Thank God for initiative, she thought,
herself
beginning to rally after the succession of shocks. Warily she continued towards the Topiary Garden.

Before she got there, she found Martin, the head gardener, on his hands and knees holding his side.

‘Little bastards … bastards,’ was all he could say. Then gradually it came out: how he’d seen them (upwards of forty) charging against the iron fence and failing to push it down, then turning back, kicking through flowerbeds, snapping off
limbs of shrubs, and at last hurling themselves on the Renaissance gardens: the pride of every head gardener for three hundred years. As if dreaming, Eleanor saw the topiary shapes: the intricately clipped orb and cross above the chess king’s crown, the delicate tiers of the geometric obelisks. Blinded by tears, she darted forward. A hand caught her, and she fell.

‘No, no, my lady,’ she heard Martin’s slow sing-song voice, ‘you can’t do that. You’d best look to the ’ouse now.’

She bent down next to him. ‘Will you be able to walk if you lean on me?’

‘Happen I’ll be able to run,’ he murmured, grasping her outstretched hand.

Mid-afternoon the following day; fine rain falling. Paul, with his hand in plaster pinned across his chest, was surveying, with the head gardener and a local detective inspector, trampled hedges and broken stumps of yew and box. Unable to bear it, Eleanor had already gone back to the house, leaving Martin, with his strapped ribs and ashen face, as a more than adequate stand-in. Well remembering how, with the help of woodcuts and engravings, Elly and the garden staff had painstakingly reconstructed authentic Jacobean knot-patterns and herb beds between the mature hedges, Paul could imagine no other place in the entire estate which he would rather have seen spared. Elsewhere a damaged shrub could be replaced without disastrous distortion; but here, in the Topiary Garden, mutilations would be endlessly preserved: the dwarfishness of young yews, next to ancestral specimens, emphasizing the general injury.

Martin had already told the detective he could identify several of the vandals, two of whom worked in Frimpton garage; another as a plumber’s mate in Belstead. ‘Trespass and malicious damage,’ he told the policeman grimly, as he jotted down facts in his notebook. ‘And others could pick’un out too.’ Paul drew a deep breath, and announced that he did not intend to bring proceedings. The investigation into the ticket forgeries was another matter.

Unable to remain silent in the face of Martin’s choking indignation, Paul led him aside and did his best to explain. For a start the worst injuries of the night had occurred in the gardens, and it would be pointed out by defence council that the kind of barriers employed would have been better suited to a concentration camp than a garden. Inevitably Lady Carnforth’s insistence on barbed wire would arouse
comment
, as would the fact that all the trespassers had been prevented from buying tickets at the gates. It would also be argued that the fans had only run amok after repeatedly attempting to leave the gardens. Sentences would not be heavy, and would only cause local bitterness. ‘
You
invited ’un here, Lord Carnforth,’ muttered the gardener. Instead of suggesting that this was cause for clemency, rather than the slaughter of scapegoats, Paul nodded meekly. For Martin to give notice would be to ice with arsenic an already lethal cake.

Abandoning any thought of conciliatory conversation with Eleanor, at least until the park had been cleared, Paul reflected on how much worse things could have been. Not one fractured skull; cuts, lacerations, bruises certainly; a handful of drug overdoses; but only three cases of broken bones (his own and Martin’s cracked ones included). No break-in at the house; not even a broken window, thanks largely to his floodlights. He had already visited the three fans detained in hospital, and had promised that Rory
himself
would be dropping in with signed copies of his LP. Any objective account of the day would surely prove that the earlier troubles had in the end only served to underline Rory Craig’s coming of age as a performer; and unless Matthew
chose to edit out the crowd’s rapture, this would have to be his message too.

Yet for all this, Paul was plagued by feelings of emptiness; depression worse than any ordinary sense of ‘morning after’ bathos. Even fears that the restoration of anything
resembling
trust between himself and Eleanor, would prove beyond him, could not explain sensations so oppressive.

Gemma, Matthew, Bridget … all living their own stories, away from him. But that was months old now. So, last night: what he’d thought himself saving for the future, had instead
ended.
Not his marriage, which he sensed would matter more to him, but everything that had started with Gemma’s suggestions before his wedding, and had gone on ever since, from the ‘happenings’, to first recordings, filming, concert triumphs, right up to the night before.

The stark simplicity of it defied denial. The very event he had been certain would draw Roy closer, had set the seal on his independence. It would have come eventually – all kingmakers faced it in the end – but Paul had been sure of a stay of execution at least until Roy’s American tour (already contemplated for the following summer). And before that, so much happening: the film’s transmission, new records, a possible European tour, more British concerts. But
suddenly
, another shaft of self-knowledge:
none
of
it
would
have
mattered
to
him.
Even before the concert in the park, he had drunk the bright cocktail to the bottom of the glass. Roy’s image Paul’s creation; his best-known song containing a high percentage of Paul’s words … now nothing else could be done to influence the shape of Matthew’s film.

In time there would be new projects – feature films perhaps; a musical; new spheres in which to be Maecenas to other men’s talents – but for the moment the future felt too distant to touch him. Wandering in the overcast park, among dead beer cans, discarded hot-dogs, and miscellaneous garbage, the clangour of the stage coming down scarcely reached him. As if, when he had turned his head, the world had drawn back a little. A foreground still crowded, but beyond it, emptier, less dramatic country.

The solution: perhaps for a year or so to give up certain things, and concentrate only on what lay close to hand: on Elly, Delvaux, and the children he knew she wanted.

*

Many times during that autumn, Paul told himself it would take time to win her back. Though there was no acting discernible in her indifference, he did his best to persuade himself she was playing a part; did his utmost through unobtrusive remorse to inch his way into her heart. And yet it was sometimes beyond him to endure her impersonal voice, and looks that drifted past him or fell short, without
betraying
anger and resentment. When talking to her, he often felt he had summoned her from a faraway place, where she had urgent business requiring a speedy return.

Less closely involved, he might have found his situation clinically intriguing; but, caring for her more than at any time since their marriage, there was too much humiliation in it for that. For instance (in line with his policy of removing, where possible, grounds for conflict), he had decamped into a dressing-room, giving Eleanor no pretext to object to his presence in her bed. Weeks later, she had still not spoken to him about his voluntary exile. Communication on mundane matters continued almost normally; he would be told she meant to go riding in the afternoon; there was a weekend shoot at this or that neighbour’s; she planned to spend next Tuesday and Wednesday in town; but though he was not positively excluded, these were clearly
her
plans, mentioned as a matter of courtesy. Had he been able to believe that unhappiness lay behind this marble facade, Paul would have been more hopeful; but, though self-absorbed, she did not seem miserable. Day by day he came closer to concluding that she had placed him in the wrong, so irretrievably, that forgiveness was not just unlikely but impossible.

One evening during a game of backgammon, he asked in an emotional voice, whether she would like him to go away for a while. After her next throw (a good one, enabling her to establish two new points), she smiled briefly. ‘If you want to.’ Her eyes slid away from him, and seemed to light upon
the legs of a marquetry table. ‘I seem to have lost the knack for having … an attitude towards you.’ A small furrow appeared between her brows. ‘I suppose I thought I’d
married
someone I never did.’

‘People change …
I’ve
changed, Elly.’

She rattled the dice absently. ‘Perhaps I just don’t care for
my
Paul: maybe I’d have been happier with Roy’s or Gemma’s.’

‘There’s only one now … yours.’

She put down the box with a thump. ‘I trust what people
do.
’
The furrow reappeared. ‘Why
now,
Paul … why not months ago when I needed you?’ She jumped up, suddenly frenzied. ‘You knew my great weakness … never admitting how much you hurt me; you worked on it so brilliantly that even
I
thought I was amazingly brave not to weep and rage. But it
wasn’t
brave, it was cowardly. I played your bloody games, because your flattery fooled me … made me mistake fear for self-respect. So easy for you to nudge me into the usual snobby trap: infra-dig to accuse or plead … Bite on the bullet, head up, never use love as a weapon.’

‘Will you keep me in the wrong forever?’

‘I was talking about
me,
Paul … the price for denying feelings. One day you look for them and they’ve crept away.’

‘If one keeps looking?’ he whispered.

She took a log from the basket and dropped it in the hottest part of the fire. Green and blue tongues of flame sizzled up around it.

‘I’m afraid it’s not that easy. All my decisions nothing but reactions to you … Got to change that, Paul. Perhaps I’m the one who should go away.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve written for details of various courses in town … not self-discovery; though who knows?’ A faint smile; reminder of a girl already gone. He found himself looking beyond her at Rubens’s portrait of Anne of Hungary. Weak mouth, restless trivial eyes. Eleanor followed his gaze. ‘I read about her the other week. Remarkable woman: musical, keen on medicine, philosophy.’

Paul picked up the dice box. ‘Finish our game?’

*

Two weeks after Eleanor’s departure for London, Paul was visited by her father. Since Lord Herrick had been appointed a Minister of State for Defence, earlier in the year, Paul appreciated the compliment paid to his matrimonial
difficulties
. It still crossed his mind that, though loving his daughter dearly, the earl might have foreseen the political disadvantages of a ‘society’ divorce starring Eleanor. But this thought did nothing to make Paul resent his visit. The man was taking so little pleasure in being proved right about the misguidedness of his daughter’s choice of husband, that Paul felt almost friendly. He also admired the sheer doggedness of his father-in-law’s efforts to make out that, minor differences apart, they shared the same values. Drinking with him before luncheon, Paul did his best to put him right on certain misapprehensions. No, he was no longer seeing Gemma, and hadn’t been for many months; nor was he considering more concerts at Delvaux; nor any further involvement with pop singers. Lord Herrick stroked his moustache anxiously.

‘Eleanor knows this?’ His surprise was real enough.

‘I’m afraid so.’

The earl sighed heavily, as if realizing he would have to say things he had hoped to avoid. He put down his glass and adjusted a good-humoured smile. ‘Ever felt you’d like to try the realities as well as the frivolities of life, Paul?’

‘You think Elly’d forgive me if I took a job?’

The Cedar Drawing room was immense; Lord Herrick moved closer to Paul, perching himself on a frail looking petit-point chair. ‘I believe I could encourage her to, uh, move in that direction, if you did.’ Paul remained silent. He wondered if Eleanor had sent him as her emissary to present these terms. His father-in-law’s brow was deeply corrugated. ‘God knows you don’t
have
to work. Nor did I. Couldn’t stand swots at school.’ A nostalgic smile fading. ‘That’s youth though. I soon learnt that work’s a fine distraction … best of all when it’s not a bread-and-butter necessity.’ A tug at his moustache. ‘Without solid meat, the finest sauces in the world soon sicken.’

Paul studied the earl’s well-creased trousers. ‘Did Elly ask you to …?’

‘Lord no … whatever you do, not a word about my visit.’ A man-to-man smile, lips humorously compressed. ‘She’s bound to have told you I’m no stained-glass saint. No preaching, you understand? But when I kick over the traces, I enjoy myself
because
it’s not an everyday event. No freedom without
some
self-restraint, eh?’

‘I’ll sell my shares in Exodus when Roy’s toured the States; I’ll include Eleanor in all my future business decisions; but I can’t promise to become “something in the City”.’

‘A lot of influence there, even these days,’ encouraged Lord Herrick, ‘and once you’re settled, the hours needn’t be inflexible. Take my own case.’ He looked away unhappily when he saw Paul’s unchanged expression. Then out of the blue, he laughed.

After that, a dozen things Paul would never have expected: his father-in-law admitting he often dreamed of starting again, still young, with everything he’d had to depend on gone. ‘Why I envied you, dear boy, when your father cut you out.’ Why too, Paul soon learned, he had opposed the marriage. ‘Knew you’d always kick against that lost escape.’ And more admissions: young Herrick had often asked
himself,
why drudge for money, having more than enough?

So why the change? As youthful hopes fade, the gap must be filled somehow. ‘Nine to Five’ could be a great consoler. ‘And anyway, how many people go on knowing exactly what they want? There’s no new angle on life that hasn’t been tried.’ Sampling some of Paul’s finest wines during
luncheon,
ending with Chateau d’Yquem 1935, Lord Herrick unbent further. Every generation lost the struggle against conformity, but thank God for every new one that tried.

After dessert: another of Delvaux’s astonishing Sauternes, and Lord Herrick offering an older man’s advice. Wives would never understand men’s natural need of variety. So how resolve it? Surely not with women known to both? (The reference to Gemma plain.) Not with call-girls or tarts; least of all amateurs trawling for easy pickings. No, he went on,
before Paul could insist that Eleanor was all he wanted, the answer was ‘a stable arrangement’. A married woman for preference; husband with other fish to fry and a job involving travel. A measure of financial help could tie things up and keep everyone happy.

‘But what if they ask for more?’ queried Paul; astonished to learn as much about his father-in-law’s unofficial life; intrigued to find out more.

‘You mean blackmail?’ Lord Herrick shrugged. ‘There’s always a risk of that … use your judgement to reduce it. Tell ’em you’d never pay.’

Later, it occurred to Paul that, were
he
the complaisant husband, he might occasionally weigh the pros and cons of going for one big pay-day, if the source of his second income suddenly became a minister of the crown. But his father-
in-law
was so obviously of the ‘publish and be damned’ variety, that regular, if small, instalments would very likely win the day.