Chapter Twenty-Three
Nelly
‘Our first stop in approximately ten minutes will be the stunning Melissani Cave,’ announces the tour guide, an adenoidal woman called Agnes, from the front of the coach. ‘It is very very famous place here in Kefalonia, said to be cave of Pan and his nymphs, back in antiquities. Cave roof, he has fallen in, long long time ago, so lake inside is open to the sky. Very beautiful, you will see.’
Following weeks of gossip and speculation, the storm has finally broken over Frank’s head, and it’s worse than Nelly could ever have imagined. ‘It’ll blow over,’ Emily, Frank’s agent, had said when the first rumours surfaced last month. She has been with Frank since David Willoughby retired six years ago, and has a steely air of authority. ‘This is all puff-of-smoke stuff, nothing but speculation and fabrication.’ Since then, photos have emerged, grainy but damning. Women have been coming forward with unpleasant stories about being harassed by Frank during his so-called ‘wilderness years’ of drinking and substance abuse. A dossier has apparently been compiled by two journalists. The words ‘sexual assault’ have been used, and the Metropolitan Police are reported to be investigating a number of allegations. There’s a Panorama documentary in the offing too, which sounds as if it will be very damaging indeed. Emily, funnily enough, has stopped talking about puffs of smoke and has instead introduced them to a legal team, who are preparing a statement on Frank’s behalf.
‘It’s not true, is it, Dad?’ Owen, their eldest son, asked yesterday on FaceTime, after the tabloids had all splashed on a story about the then eighteen-year-old work-experience girl who Frank– allegedly– took to a hotel room, plied with alcohol and drugs and had sex with. He would have been thirty-eight at the time, only six years older than Owen is now. ‘Of course it isn’t,’ Frank had blustered. ‘It’s complete lies. These women are just trying to get money out of me, and there’s nothing more to it than that.’
How Nelly wishes she could trust her husband when he rants on that the whole thing is a conspiracy to bring him down, an absolute confection of lies, and that some people will do anything for publicity. How she wishes, moreover, that she had the guts to ask him Owen’s question herself and have him look her in the eye when he answered. No father wants his son to think ill of him, but a husband should be able to tell a wife anything, however shameful, however difficult to confess. Otherwise what does it say about their marriage? Frank, be honest with me, Ireally need to know. But the words remain unsaid, stoppered up inside her like corked wine. Because. . . Well, because what if the allegations are true?
He might be at the centre of the storm, but her world has been violently upended by the stories too. Has she been that gullible, that stupid to have believed in their happy marriage for all this time? It feels as if someone has taken a mallet to her life, battering everything out of recognisable shape. ‘Is this why we’re here on Kefalonia?’ she’d asked him yesterday morning, when they woke up to the blaring headlines and his phone vibrating ceaselessly with notifications. ‘Did you know that this was all about to break?’
‘Of course not! Can’t Itreat you to a holiday now without you turning against me as well?’ he’d retaliated, turning puce. ‘You’re supposed to be my wife, Nelly! Whose side are you on, anyway?’
Good question, Frank. Really good question.
Take it from Nelly, having both your marriage implode and your husband’s reputation blown to smithereens while the two of you are sharing a hotel room is not ideal. It has been hellish, in fact, being trapped with him inside their suite, however luxurious, while the rest of the world clamours at your door. ‘Ineed to get out,’ she told him last night when the walls started closing in, when the calls kept coming. ‘Ican’t bear this.’
‘ You can’t bear it?’ he’d jeered. ‘How do you think Ifeel?’
How do you think those women felt, Frank? she wanted to yell. I’m not sure you’re actually the victim here. Again, though, the words remained unsaid. Her feelings are all over the place. He is still her husband, however angry she might feel right now. They have been together for decades and, despite everything, the instinct to take his side, protect him, remains hard-wired in her. But how can she take his side on this occasion, given everything that is coming to light? When a grim certainty is starting to take hold: that the man she married might not be the lovable charmer she has always thought?
Idon’t know what to think, she messaged Lorraine earlier, in reply to one of her supportive texts. It’s cowardly, though, to keep backing away from the big awful truth she suspects has sundered their marriage. To hide behind an ‘Idon’t know’. The uncertainty remains a restless energy racing around her body; by yesterday evening, all she wanted was to run, get away, be alone for a while, but where? If they were at home, she’d jump in the car and take herself off for some headspace, knock on Lorraine’s door and cry in her kitchen, but that’s not possible here. ‘I’m going to see if the hotel can sort out a day trip or something, just for a change of scene,’ she’d said in the end.
‘What, like one of those coach tours?’ he’d said, scorn in his voice. ‘Count me out then.’
You , she felt like retorting, are not invited
anyway . She didn’t say that either. But now here she is, on a day-long island excursion (yes, Frank, ‘one of those coach tours’), and for the first time in ages she feels able to breathe again, away from the strain of being Mrs Frank Neale. It’s odd, not having him beside her, but it’s a reminder that before she met him she’d been perfectly happy to make her own independent way through life. And so far she’s rather enjoying herself, taking pictures through the coach window of the sweet little wild goats munching grass at the roadside, and looking forward to the sights in store. After the caves, they’re due to stop at two little towns, Poros and Assos, then pause for a brief photo opportunity up on the headland overlooking Myrtos Beach. According to Agnes, some of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was filmed there and it is the prettiest beach in all of Greece. ‘Put your pictures on social media,’ she advises. ‘Everyone will love!’
Nelly presses her lips together as she stares out of the window, doubting very much if she will be looking at social media any time soon. Neither will Frank, if he has any sense.
A lump forms in her throat, because she can be as determinedly independent as the next woman but there’s no getting away from the fact that it feels odd to be here without him today. Not least because, until she first got wind of these claims, their marriage had mostly been a good thing. Ever since that first drink, following their chance Michael-Cranborne-related meeting (‘We will name our first child after him,’ Frank was vowing a week or so later), there had been something sparky and exciting between them– enticing enough that she could finally put Alexander and her Greek odyssey behind her and move on. That night in The Cambridge she’d discovered that he wasn’t merely ‘working in a pub’, as he’d modestly claimed earlier. No, he was head chef at the restaurant of an historic coaching inn in Buckinghamshire. ‘More of a hotel, strictly speaking,’ he’d admitted. At the tender age of twenty-eight, he’d been nominated for a prestigious culinary award, a fact that had caught the attention of one David Willoughby, who’d happened to be dining there some weeks earlier. Later, at the bar, David had struck up conversation with the charismatic young chef and pronounced himself impressed. ‘I’m going to get you on television, Frank,’ had been David’s parting words. ‘Call me.’
‘He reckons he can make me famous– and both me and him loads of money,’ Frank had told Nelly in the Cambridge, shrugging a little, as if this sort of thing happened to him every day. ‘So Ireckon you could do worse than sticking with me while we find out if that’s true, Nelly Neale– wouldn’t you say?’
He could always talk the talk, that was the thing about Frank. Should she have seen this as a red flag at the time? She was too busy rediscovering the giddy flutter of fancying someone again after a year of heartbreak, though, to check too closely exactly what she was getting herself into.
In the early days, when Frank’s star first went into orbit with the launch of his TV show, Owen was two and Cameron had just been born, and she had been tucked away with them in their new Sussex farmhouse, blissfully ignorant of any shenanigans that might have been afoot. That was how they split the labour: Frank had gone on to open his own Chelsea restaurant, then written a series of bestselling glossy cookbooks with his face on the cover, while Nelly brought up the boys and made them all a home. She was proud of his hard work, proud of his success– they had a lovely life together, wonderful holidays. Yes, she knew he partied hard as well, yes, she’d become aware of the excess drinking, the drugs and benders. The way he’d occasionally vanish, unseen for days on end, which she found particularly stressful. But if the accusations are to be believed, his behaviour wasn’t limited to self-abuse during those periods– he was actually up to far worse. Making a mockery of everything she had held precious.
Had she been part of the problem though? she keeps fretting. Because a couple of buried memories have come back to her in the past few days, troubling her greatly. She remembers being on set once and noticing a female runner being comforted by some other women in a cluster, overhearing one of them saying, ‘He’s such a piece of shit’ before hurriedly changing the subject when they noticed Nelly in the vicinity. Other moments– seeing a glance between members of Frank’s (female) PR team once when he was making a speech at a publishing party, and realising, with a little shock, that they didn’t like him for some reason. The occasional overheard remark, prompting questions she didn’t want to hear answered. Each time, she’d felt that same prickle of uncertainty– was Frank being called a piece of shit? Was that contempt in the women’s faces? Why?– but she’d chosen not to further interrogate these lines of thought, chosen instead to bury them in the depths of her subconscious.
What if she had been braver, she keeps asking herself. What if she had trusted her instincts, asked a few questions? Is this her fault, too, for colluding and keeping quiet?
‘Of course it’s not your bloody fault!’ Lorraine had exploded down the phone when Nelly voiced her concerns. ‘You took his side– that’s what we do! It would have been a crap kind of marriage if you’d immediately taken the side of complete strangers rather than your own husband, Nell. You trusted him, like we all did. Don’t you dare start blaming yourself, do you hear me?’
She closes her eyes miserably, trying to tune back in to the coach trip, and Agnes’ potted history of the island as they continue along the winding roads through the rugged mountains. The only problem is that, with Agnes’ strong accent, the mountain she has referred to several times, Aenos, sounds unfortunately like Mount Anus, which makes the two young women in the seats behind convulse with giggles at every repetition.
‘Now, let me tell you about Pan,’ Agnes goes on. ‘He is son of Hermes, and god of shepherds and flocks, wild groves and woodland. He is very sexual, very funny, very ugly.’
The two young women start tittering again. ‘Pretty sure I’ve met him out at Revs,’ says one. ‘Totally,’ says the other. ‘Ireckon we’ve all been Panned.’
Nelly meanwhile can’t help but think about her husband once more. Apart from the ugliness, he is apparently so Pan-like he regularly had so-called raunchy sex and cocaine parties with girls from the television production company, according to a new story in the Mirror this morning. ‘It got to the point where some of us actually took the decision to quit our jobs rather than have to work with Frank Neale again,’ one of them was quoted as saying. Those poor girls, honestly, Nelly could weep for them. And for herself too, the unsuspecting mug rustling up dinner back home at their cosy family farmhouse, telling him he was working too hard when he eventually made it through the front door, baggy-eyed and exhausted. She’s totally been Panned.
Agnes goes on to tell the story of Melissani, a nymph who was so devastated to have been betrayed by Pan that she threw herself into the pool at the bottom of the cave, thus meeting her death. Who’d be a woman– or nymph? thinks Nelly, her hands curling into fists on her lap. We think times have changed, that everything’s got better, but the bastards are still betraying us left, right and centre. Oh, what is she doing , still here in Greece with Frank, when all the evidence points to a pattern of atrocious, disgusting behaviour? Why hasn’t she fled back home already, far away from him? Come and stay with us when you get back, Mum, her youngest son Cameron said the other night on the phone, and she is tempted. Stepping out of the story, letting it all swirl on without her, while Cameron and his boyfriend Nate fuss about her in their Twickenham cottage. . . the thought gets more appealing by the day. Lorraine, bless her, has offered Nelly the use of her and Jim’s static caravan in Dorset, should she need another option. ‘It might not be the luxury you’re used to,’ she’d warned, ‘but it’s so windy out there on the headland that nobody can hear you scream, at least.’ Good to know.
They have arrived at the caves and the coach parks up. Everyone disembarks into the sun’s glare, and Agnes counts out passes for them to show at the ticket desk.
Once through the barriers, and past a replica carving of the lascivious Pan himself (dirty old git, Nelly thinks, curling her lip), the group has to queue down a steep rocky tunnel to the entrance of the cave. As they shuffle forward through the tunnel, the light becomes steadily brighter ahead, until they eventually reach the opening to the cave, and the lake beyond. ‘Feels a bit like being born, doesn’t it,’ quips a woman behind her in the queue to her friend. Nelly’s not sure about that but all the same, it’s impossible not to gaze up, up, up the steep rocky sides of the large cave to where they eventually reach the cloudless blue sky above without feeling impressed. The light on the water is something else too– the most gorgeous bright cerulean, fading to a deep indigo in the shadows. There are rowing boats lined up at the water’s edge, and Nelly and the other day-trippers step wobblingly on board one and find seats. Then a guide stands in the middle, takes up the oars and pushes them away from the jetty, singing an echoing ‘O Sole Mio’ with great gusto, which raises a few laughs. No doubt he makes the same joke at least twenty times a day, Nelly thinks, as they glide through the clear water, past craggy stalactites and stalagmites.
‘Are there eels in there?’ a woman asks, pointing into the lake.
‘Eels, yes, big eels,’ comes the reply. ‘Eels in the water, bats up above. Lots of creatures in the caves.’
The splashing of the water against the side of the boat suddenly takes Nelly back to a different time, a different boat, when she was a young woman in Greece, on the Miaoulis . She’d found her old diary from that time earlier this year and read through the entries with great nostalgia and fondness. One of the happiest periods of her entire life, she has always thought. Followed, of course, by one of the unhappiest. She thinks of herself back in her mum and dad’s house, weeping face-down into the pillow, experiencing her first real heartbreak, and wonders now where she’ll go if she and Frank split up. Cameron’s a generous host but the cottage isn’t large, and she doesn’t want to impose on him for too long. Nor does she want either of their sons to feel they have to take a side. She’ll have to sort out a flat– or maybe he’d be the one to move out, or. . .
Oh God. It’s going to be awful, whatever happens. She never expected that she’d have to go through this again in her sixties. But something has to change, surely? She and Frank can’t ignore the huge great fault line that has abruptly cracked open their marriage.
The little boat heads into the far recesses of the cave, where, once out of the sun’s heat, the temperature drops noticeably. Here the water is the colour of dark ink, broken by the occasional gull feather or streak of bright white birdshit. It’s creepy and quiet in the shadows, with only the sound of the oars splashing. Her thoughts turn to Charon, the mythical ferryman, transporting the dead across the River Styx, and she wraps her arms around herself, pressing her fingers against her bare skin as a reminder that she is still alive.
Just like she got through the awful summer after Alexander, she’ll get through this time too, she vows. She picked herself up and figured out a way forward then, didn’t she? Somehow or other she needs to channel her old fighting spirit, the same love for life that the younger Nelly had, and find a way to keep going, whichever direction that means she takes. Plunging from a great height like the doomed Melissani is simply not an option.