Swings and roundabouts, Im afraid, I heard him say dozens of times to disappointed clients. What goes up, must come down.
So why did his clients trust him? Because he made them laugh, I think, and because he so evidently believed he was going to make their fortunes.
So why did I stay with him for so long?
It was partly because I came to like many of the things he did. Still do, actually. You soon get a taste for big hotels, fast cars and parties. I liked the touch of fur against my skin and the way diamonds sparkled by candlelight. I liked dancing and flirting and taking one or two risks. I occasionally helped Henry attract potential clients, and even that could be fun. Lets have some old widow, hed say when things were going well for us, and suddenly there would be another bottle of Veuve Clicquot and another toast to us, to the future.
When Henry met me I was a shy, gawky girl. He rescued me from Harewood Drive and gave me confidence in myself. I think I stayed with him partly because I was afraid that without him I would lose all I had gained.
Most of all, though, I stayed because I liked Henry. I suppose I loved him, though Im not sure what that means. But when things were going well between us, it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Even better than dry martinis and the old widow.
Letters continued to travel between Janet and me. They were proper ones long and chatty. I didnt say much about Henry and she didnt say much about David. A common theme was our plans to meet. Once or twice we managed to snatch a day in London together. But we never went to stay with each other. Somehow there were always reasons why visits had to be delayed.
We were always on the move. Henry never liked settling in one place for any length of time. When he was feeling wealthy we rented flats or stayed in hotels. When money was tight, we went into furnished rooms.
But I was going to spend a few days with Janet and David in Rosington after Easter 1957. Just me, of course Henry had to go away on what he called a business trip, and in any case he didnt want to go back to Rosington. Too many people knew why hed left.
Id even done my packing. Then the day before I was due to go, a telegram arrived. Mrs Treevor had had a massive heart attack. Once again the visit was postponed. She died three days later. Then there was the funeral, and then the business of settling Mr Treevor into a flat in Cambridge. Janet wrote that her father was finding it hard to cope since her mothers death.
So we continued to write letters instead. Despite her mothers death, it seemed to me that Janet had found her fairy tale. She sent me photographs of Rosie, as a baby and then as a little girl. Rosie had her mothers colouring and her fathers features. It was obvious that she too was perfect, just like David and the Dark Hostelry.
Lifes so bloody unsubtle sometimes. It was all too easy to contrast Janets existence with mine. But you carry on, dont you, even when your life is more like one long hangover than one long party. You think, what else is there to do?
But there was something else. There had to be, as I found out on a beach one sunny day early in October 1957. Henry and I were staying at a hotel in the West Country. We werent on holiday a potential client lived in the neighbourhood, a wealthy widow.
It was a fine afternoon, warm as summer, and I went out after lunch while Henry went off to a meeting. I wandered aimlessly along the beach, a Box Brownie swinging from my hand, trying to walk off an incipient hangover. I rounded the corner of a little rocky headland and there they were, Henry and the widow, lying on a rug.
She was an ugly woman with a moustache and fat legs. I had a very good view of the legs because her dress was up around her thighs and Henry was bouncing around on top of her. His bottom was bare and for a moment I watched the fatty pear-shaped cheeks trembling. The widow was still wearing her shoes, which were navy-blue and high-heeled, surprisingly dainty. I wouldnt have minded a pair of shoes like that. I remember wondering how she could have walked across the sand in such high heels, and whether she realized that sea water would ruin the leather.
I had never seen Henry from this point of view before. I knew he was vain, and hated the fact that he was growing older. (He secretly touched up his grey hairs with black dye.) The wobbling flesh was wrinkled and flabby. Henry was getting old, and so was I. It was the first moment in my life when I realized that time was running out for me personally as well as for other people and the planet.
Maybe it was the alcohol but I felt removed from the situation, capable of considering it as an abstract problem. I walked towards them, my bare feet soundless on the sand. I crouched a few yards away from the shuddering bodies. Suddenly they realized they were not alone. Simultaneously they turned their heads to look at me, the widow with her legs raised and those pretty shoes in the air.
Still in that state of alcoholic transcendence, I had the sense to raise the Box Brownie and press the shutter.
6
I dont keep many photographs. I am afraid of nostalgia. You can drown in dead emotions.
Among the photographs I have thrown away is the shot of Henry bouncing on his widow on the beach. I knew at once that it could be valuable, that it meant I could divorce Henry without any trouble. At the time, the remarkable thing was how little the end of the marriage seemed to matter. Perhaps, I thought as I took the film out of the camera, perhaps it was never really a marriage at all, just a mutually convenient arrangement which had now reached a mutually convenient end.
I still have a snap of us by the pool in somebodys back garden in Durban with Henry sucking in his tummy and me showing what at the time seemed a daring amount of naked flesh. Theres just the two of us in the photograph, but its obvious from the body language that Henry and I arent a couple in any meaningful sense of the word. Obvious with twenty-twenty hindsight, anyway.
In my letters to Janet I had been honest about everything except Henry. I didnt conceal the fact that money was sometimes tight, or even that I was drinking too much. But I referred to Henry with wifely affection. Must close now His Nibs has just come in, and he wants his tea. He sends his love, as do I.
It was pride. Janet had her Mr Perfect and I wanted mine, or at least the illusion of him. But I think Id known the marriage was in trouble before the episode with the widow. What I saw on the beach merely confirmed it.
I want a divorce, I said to Henry when he came back to our room in the hotel. By the smell of him hed fortified himself in the bar downstairs.
Wendy please. Cant we ?
No, we cant.
Darling. Listen to me. I
I mean it.
All right, he said, his opposition crumbling with humiliating speed. As soon as you like.
I felt sober now and I had a headache. I had found the bottle of black hair dye hidden as usual in one of the pockets of his suitcase. It was empty now. Id poured the contents over his suits and shirts.
No hard feelings, I lied. Ill let you have some money.
He looked across the room at me and smiled rather sadly. What money?
You know something? I said. When I saw you on top of that cow, your bum was wobbling around all over the place. It was like an old mans. The skin looked as if it needed ironing.
No hard feelings, I lied. Ill let you have some money.
He looked across the room at me and smiled rather sadly. What money?
You know something? I said. When I saw you on top of that cow, your bum was wobbling around all over the place. It was like an old mans. The skin looked as if it needed ironing.
In the four months after I found Henry doing physical jerks on top of his widow, I wrote to Janet less often than usual. I sent her a lot of postcards. Henry and I were moving around, I said, which was true. Except, of course, we werent moving around together. In a sense I spent those four months pretending to myself and everyone else that everything was normal. I didnt want to leave my rut even if Henry was no longer in there with me.
Eventually the money ran low and I made up my mind I had to do something. I came back to London. It was February now, and the city was grey and dank. I found a solicitor in the phone book. His name was Fielder, and the thing I remember most about him was the ill-fitting toupee whose colour did not quite match his natural hair. He had an office in Praed Street above a hardware shop near the junction with Edgware Road.
I went to see him, explained the situation and gave him the address of Henrys solicitor. I told him about the photograph but didnt show it to him, and I mentioned my mothers money too. He said hed see what he could do and made an appointment for me the following week.
Time crawled while I waited. I had too much to think about and not enough to do. When the day came round, I went back to Fielders office.
Well, Mrs Appleyard, things are moving now. He slid a sheet of paper across the desk towards me. The wheels are turning. Time for a fresh start, eh?
I opened the sheet of paper. It was a bill.
Just for interim expenses, Mrs Appleyard. No point in letting them mount up.
What does my husbands solicitor say?
Im afraid theres a bit of a problem there. Mr Fielder patted his face with a grubby handkerchief. He wore a brown double-breasted pinstripe suit which encased him like a suit of armour and looked thick enough for an Arctic winter. There were drops of moisture on his forehead, and his neck bulged over his tight, hard collar. Yes, a bit of a problem.
Do you mean there isnt any money?
I did have a reply from Mr Appleyards solicitor. Fielder scrabbled among the papers on his desk for a few seconds and then gave up the search. The long and the short of it is that Mr Appleyard told him your joint assets no longer seem to exist.
But there must be something left. Cant we take him to court?
We could, Mrs Appleyard, we could. But wed have to find him first. Unfortunately Mr Appleyard seems to have left the country. In confidence I may tell you he hasnt even settled his own solicitors bill. He shook his head sadly. Not a desirable state of affairs at all. Not at all. Which reminds me ?
Dont worry. I opened my handbag and dropped the bill into it.
Of course. And then well carry on in Mr Appleyards absence. It should be quite straightforward. He glanced at his watch. By the way, your husband left a letter for you care of his solicitor. I have it here.
I dont want to see it.
Then what would you like me to do with it?
I dont care. Put it in the wastepaper basket. My voice sounded harsh, more Bradford than Hillgard House. I dont mean to seem rude, Mr Fielder, but I dont think he has anything to say that I want to hear.
Walking back to my room along the crowded pavement I wanted to blame Fielder. He had been inefficient, he had been corrupt, but even then I knew neither of these things were true. I just wanted to blame somebody for the mess my life was in. Henry was my preferred candidate but he wasnt available. So I had to focus my anger on poor Fielder. Before I reached my room, Id invented at least three cutting curtain lines I might have used, and also constructed a satisfying fantasy which ended with him in the dock at the Old Bailey with myself as the chief prosecution witness. Fantasies reveal the infant that lives within us all. Which is why theyre dangerous because the usual social constraints dont operate on infants.
When I went into the house, Mrs Hyson, the landlady, opened the kitchen door a crack and peered at me, but said nothing. I ate dry bread and elderly cheese in my room for lunch to save money. I kept on my overcoat to postpone putting a shilling in the gas meter. Since leaving Henry I had lived on the contents of my current account at the bank and my Post Office Savings Account, a total of about two hundred pounds, and by selling a fur coat and one or two pieces of jewellery.
I wasnt even sure I could afford to divorce Henry. First I needed to find a job but I was not trained to do anything. I was twenty-six years old and completely unemployable. There were relations in Leeds a couple of aunts I hadnt seen for years and cousins Id never met. Even if I could track them down there was no reason why they should help me. Thats when I opened my writing case and began the letter to Janet.
Looking back, I think I must have been very near a nervous breakdown when I wrote that letter. Its more than forty years ago now, but I can still remember how the panic welled up. The certainties were gone. In the past Id always known what to do next. I often didnt want to do it but that was not the point. What had counted was the fact the future was mapped out. Id also taken for granted there would be a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table. But now I had nothing.
I looked for the letter after Janets death and was glad I could not find it. I hope she destroyed it. I cannot remember exactly what I told her, though I would have kept nothing back except perhaps my envy of her. What I do remember is how I felt while I was writing that letter in the chilly little room in Paddington. I felt I was trying to swim in a black sea. The waves were so rough and my waterlogged clothes weighed me down. I was drowning.
Early in the evening I went out to post the letter. On the way back I passed a pub. A few yards down the pavement I stopped, turned back and went into the saloon bar. It was a high-ceilinged room with mirrors on the walls and chairs upholstered in faded purple velvet. Apart from two old ladies drinking port, it was almost empty, which gave me courage. I marched up to the counter and ordered a large gin and bitter lemon, not caring what they thought of me.
Waiting for someone then? the barmaid asked.
No. I watched the gin sliding into the glass and moistened my lips. Youre not very busy tonight.
I doubt if the place was ever busy. It smelled of failure. That suited me. I sat in the corner and drank first one drink, then another and then a third. A man tried to pick me up and I almost said yes, just for the hell of it.
There were women around here who made a living from men. You saw them hanging round the station and on street corners, huddled in doorways or bending down to a car window to talk to the man inside. Could I do that? Would you ever get used to having strange men pawing at you? How much would you charge them? And what happened when you grew old and they stopped wanting you?
To escape the questions I couldnt answer, I had another drink, and then another. In the end I lost count. I knew I was drinking tomorrows lunch and tomorrows supper, and then the day afters meals as well, and in a way that added to the despairing pleasure the process gave me. The barmaid and her mother persuaded me to leave when I ran out of money and started crying.