Chapter 19

Sunday 3rd to Tuesday 12th January 1971

A week may be a long time in politics as Harold Wilson opined, but that week between Christmas and New Year was longer by far.

On Sunday the 3rd of January I sat in my armchair in my empty flat, or at least it felt empty. Colette was sitting on the sofa. I had heard nothing from Connie since she had left on Boxing Day with her father.

We sat in silence, the feeling of oppression mitigated only by the music playing on the radio. Colette was reading a novel, and I was sitting staring into space, something I had done frequently during that week.

What was it with these Roasburies? Two sisters, and they behaved in exactly the same way, except that the older sister had cheated under the impression I had cheated, and now it seemed Connie had the same impression.

For the first two days I thought nothing of it, but by the Wednesday I began to worry. She had taken enough clothes for a short visit and all the rest were in the second bedroom. The girls rallied round as usual, though I did not feel any need of sexual comfort from them. They were, however, just as puzzled as I was.

They dragged me to a New Year’s Party, and I wondered all through that evening if she would phone to wish me a Happy New Year and explain her silence, but there was nothing. On New Year’s Day divorce in Britain became very easy and that affected me: it seemed symbolic of the Roasburies. Then something snapped in me and I rang the house. The dragon answered.

“What do you want?” she asked after I identified myself.

“And a Happy New Year to you too, Mrs Roasburie,” I replied putting in all the sarcasm I could muster.

“I don’t need any of that from you,” she replied tartly.

“I would like to speak with Connie please,” I said softening my tone.

“She’s not here.” Click.

I phoned Derek. Ingrid answered.

“Graham?” she sounded surprised, as well she might. “What’s the matter?”

“Happy New Year, Ingrid,” I began, “though it isn’t very happy for me at the moment.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You remember coming to see me to ask if Penny could talk to me?”

“Yes.”

“She never came.”

“But that is because what you told to us was wrong. It was not true. You had been seeing someone else. We were there at Christmas, and her mother had proof you had been seeing other women while engaged to Penny. Derek is here.”

“Graham?”

“Hello Derek, what’s going on? Connie left here on Boxing Day with her father for a couple of days. It’s a week now, and I’ve heard nothing from her.”

“We didn’t see Connie,” he replied. “We left on Boxing Day morning. They didn’t say they’d found her or we’d have stayed.”

“So what’s this about proof I’d been seeing other women when I was seeing Penny?”

“Mother’s brother engaged a Private Investigator for her last year when Penny was in Liverpool, and he came up with a report and photographs. She didn’t use them because you broke up, but after the fracas in November, she showed Penny and the rest of us. It’s convincing, Graham.”

“If there were photo’s, they wouldn’t show much, because there weren’t any women while Penny was in Liverpool. I thought the girls explained that in November.”

“Graham, these photos showed that there was a lot more to your relationships with the women. From what we saw, you and the three women weren’t telling the truth. It’s clear the lot of you were lying through your teeth. I think it would be better if you kept well clear of us all in future. Go fuck your sluttish colleagues.” Click.

I was dumbstruck. This certainty seemed so far from the reality of what actually happened. So now that my suspicion began to grow that Connie had also seen and believed the report. I could not understand how it could be so convincing, but it was unlikely I would ever find out, or that I would ever see Connie again either.

I had relayed the information to the girls, and Colette had come to stay for the weekend. We slept in the same bed but by unspoken agreement did not engage in any carnal pursuits. So there we were reading on a dull afternoon as the dusk fell.

“Graham,” Colette said at length. “You could do with a break after all this. Why don’t you take next week off? You’ve got holiday entitlement coming to you that needs using up. Have a break. I have some time owing as well, we could go away for a few days. Take the whole week off, and I’ll join you.”

It seemed a good idea. Colette went home, since we were back at work the next day, when we both booked the following week off. No one else wanted the second week in January! It turned out the week was good, the warmest for many years and mainly dry.

Colette insisted we splash out on a really luxurious hotel to cheer me up, so we agreed she would book a suite at the Cavendish Hotel in Mayfair, London, from Wednesday 13th January to the Saturday after, with the intention of ‘doing’ the Museums and Art Galleries. We also booked first class returns on the train. It cost us frightening amount of money and as always we split the cost, but it was still very expensive.

I spent the week at work re-organising my diary and working late to complete the work and meetings which would not wait until I returned. Zena insisted she would field any urgent work that might come up.

When I arrived home on Wednesday, quite late on, I knew someone had been in the flat. Nothing seemed to have been touched or moved around, but I had that feeling. I ranged round the flat and ended in Connie’s room, when it became obvious that she had been there that day. More of her clothes were missing, and things were moved around in the room.

I looked for a note. Nothing. Well, I changed that. I wrote one instead and left it prominently in her room.

The note was still there on Thursday evening, but had disappeared on Friday. However, there was no note from her in response.

As I might have expected with the Roasburies, I spent much of the weekend wondering if it would provoke any reaction. I could not work out if any more clothing had been taken. There was no reaction, no response.

On Monday, the first day of my week off work, I slept in and then Colette took me out shopping and for an evening meal.

“Tomorrow I’ll come over and stay the night again, OK?”

“OK.”

“In your bed.”

“Definitely. I think Connie’s in the past. She’s gone.”

“I’ll bring my Sexy Nightie.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

On Tuesday, Colette came over in the afternoon and we checked we had everything – train tickets with seats and breakfast on the train booked, and hotel reservations confirmed. She dropped her bag in Connie’s old room and we then sat in the living room and drank our tea.

Late in the afternoon, we were both startled by the sound of the front door being opened with a key. Zena had a key but was at work. The only other person was Connie! Wouldn’t you just believe it!

Colette made to get up, but I signalled her to sit tight. Whoever it was went to Connie’s bedroom. There was an exclamation of surprise. We nodded at each other. We assumed it was Connie and she had found Colette’s bag.

The footsteps came to the living room and Connie entered, and stopped short at the sight of us. Her face showed shock and surprise, then dislike.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“If you’ve come for the rest of your things, get on with it.” I snapped.

“I’ve not–”

“Constance, the property you are taking away is yours, but that is not the point. The point is your sheer bad manners and deception in not facing me and giving me an explanation. It’s a real slap in the face for all those people who took you to their hearts and offered you friendship. None of us deserve this sort of treatment. You are behaving exactly as your sister did. So what have you to say?”

She looked puzzled, and I thought that perhaps there was some guilt there, then again dislike.

She scowled and said, “You told me a pack of lies about what you did with Penny. That’s what it’s about. You were pretending to love her and saying you wanted to get married and all the time you were sleeping with your ‘girls’ for months before you proposed to her, and for months after. She was devastated when she found out.

“And you got all these other people to help you.” She gestured at Colette. “How could you do that? You would have done the same with me. Mum said it was a lucky escape.”

“OK,” I said, restraining my frustration and anger. “Putting aside the fact that all that is a pack of lies on Penny’s behalf – I assume because she is ashamed of what she has done – putting that aside for now, why not talk to me? Even criminals get a trial. You condemned me without trial.”

Connie stood still, looking more uncomfortable. She said nothing.

“Nothing to say, Constance?” I deliberately used her full name to show my displeasure. “OK, we move on.

“I’m telling you truthfully that I was never unfaithful to Penny. Ever. At all. She lies. Without talking to me first she slept with another man, and I suspect she did it, not because she thought I was cheating, but because she wanted to. I think that is why she would not face me. So what do you say to that?”

At this Connie seemed to come to life.

“I know you are lying, and it’s despicable you still pretending you are wronged and innocent. You really conned me. I’ve seen the proof of what you’ve done. I’ve seen photo’s of you with Colette here in bed, and with the other two. You’re all in this together.”

“I don’t believe you. Show me them.”

“Mother’s brother had you investigated when Penny went to Liverpool. There’s a full report of all your fucking around, and photos, clear photos. So you can stop your posturing. Just admit it, you’re a pitiful philanderer.”

“Well, since I’ve not seen any of this, I can’t comment. So why don’t you show me? Where is this so called ‘report’?”

“Penny’s got it,” said Connie.

“Very convenient,” I scoffed. “So how are you going to produce it? She won’t come near me.”

“I could go and get it,” said Connie.

I burst out laughing. “And I’d never see you again. I think this is a bluff to get you out of my flat. Admit it.”

I was goading her: at last I had a chance to get Penny to meet me.

“I could phone her,” said Connie. “How would that be?”

“OK,” I said, “Get her here with this ‘report’, and let me see it.”

Connie looked uncertain then at my wanting to see the report so eagerly, but went off to the hallway to phone.

Connie returned. “Penny doesn’t want to see you, but she’ll bring the report.”

“Tough!” I said, “She will see me, because I’m going to answer the door. Then at last we can talk properly.”

“We’ll talk all right,” Connie said harshly, “and there will be some grovelling to be done.”

The doorbell rang, and I went to answer it. I opened it. There she stood. She looked surprised, perhaps astonished.

She was just as pretty as she had been when we were together, though now she wore a grimace of distain. It reminded me of her mother and did nothing for her looks. I looked inside myself for some feelings for her but she was like a stranger.

“Come in,” I said, no more.

She walked past me and went to living room. She had a briefcase which she put on the dining table, opened it, took out a large envelope and extracted its contents: a booklet and a pile of photos. Then she shed her coat and put it over the back of the dining chair.

She stood back, her arms folded. She said nothing to me.

I went to the table, sat down in another chair and read the report carefully, which purported to be a record of the investigator’s surveillance of me from October 69 until April 70. Then I examined the photos, putting them on the table in the order of the dates written on the back of each photo. There were plenty. I seemed to remember some of the venues, and who I was with. I remembered that man who kept appearing when I was out with one or other of the girls in the summer. The photographs being dated was a help to me.

Lawyers are trained to look for details, and there were enough details to make me wonder why neither of the Roasburie girls had seen them. Perhaps they didn’t want to, or perhaps like most people, what they saw was what they expected to see.

It was true that the photographs were incriminating. There was one of Colette and I going into my flat and another of her leaving the next morning looking dishevelled; a Saturday with Colette in a diaphanous nightie in her doorway snogging my mouth off and revealing she had no knickers on. I must have been going for the papers and pastries. There was another of Colette and me in her ground floor flat, both naked and in the throes of passion. They were the worst. I wondered why we didn’t notice a photographer, though they seemed to be taken from some adjoining flats with a telephoto lens.

The others were less blatant, dancing closely with Zena in a club, coming out of theatres, often arm in arm often kissing, and some of them were with Harriet.

The report purported to explain where and when the events occurred, and notably I knew that some of the descriptions were outright lies, of the sort the papparazzi concoct about the famous. One supposedly had a neighbour of Zena complaining of the noise we made making love because the walls were so thin, and moaning about the frequency of such trysts.

I went to my room, returning with my diary and my own photographs, I turned to the last page of the report and found the name of the investigation agency with their address and phone number. I copied the details into my notebook.

“These photos are a fabrication,” I said, “and some of the descriptions are fictitious. I’m surprised no one has noticed.”

“You can’t wriggle out of it that easy,” said Penny coldly. “They catalogue action by action how you cheated on me with dates and places.”

“I don’t need to do any wriggling,” I said. “If the report is actually by this agency, I will be suing them for libel. I’ll crucify them. It is not necessary for me to prove that all this is fantasy, I can show it by merely asking you some questions.”

I’m afraid the lawyer in me had come to the fore. I was cross-examining a witness. It was Penny in the witness box. Penny bridled but I was ploughing on.