by James Meek
And yet, to Ritchie’s indignation, they couldn’t leave him alone. His sister was all over the media one day on account of her malaria vaccine. The jab had been a success, apparently. To Ritchie, it seemed undignified for a scientist to be posing and pontificating all over TV, radio, the Internet, the papers. First it was Alex with his cancer, now Bec with her malaria. Humility became the wise, Ritchie felt. They’d worked hard in their dingy labs, sweating over tedious calculations and test tubes and formulas or whatever, and they’d done well. To be flaunting themselves in public as they were was inappropriate. Did Bec realise, Ritchie wondered sadly, how ephemeral fame was? Did she realise that her picture only appeared on the front of so many papers because she was pretty? It put him out that on the day the news broke the BBC website gave the malaria story more prominence than the drama of Teen Makeover, where they were down to the last three contestants. It seemed odd to him that none of the stories about Bec mentioned that she was Ritchie Shepherd’s sister.
Ritchie sent Bec a bunch of flowers with a card that read You’re more famous than me!!! She called to thank him. He was glad to hear from her. It seemed that he was as fond of her as he’d ever been. He became sentimental and nostalgic, and they talked about the first holiday they’d taken with their mother after their father died, and how strange it had been on the beach without him, how brave the two of them had been to charge into the waves and swim in the cold North Sea. Ritchie remembered what a relief it had been to his fifteen-year-old self to hide from the adulthood that was pressing in on him and partake of his little sister’s childhood, to play with her in the water as if he were a young boy her age. He felt so warm now towards Bec, such a sense of refuge, that he dared to ask her whether she’d think again about her opposition to his film.
‘What was it like when you met him?’ asked Bec. ‘O’Donabháin.’
‘In the beginning I hated him,’ said Ritchie. ‘But when I forgave him I felt better. More whole.’
‘Whole?’
‘Yes.’
‘The closure you talked about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think that’s what I should do? Forgive the man who murdered Dad?’
‘Forgiveness doesn’t justify him. I think it hurt him to be forgiven by me.’
‘You’re saying that I should forgive him to punish him. That doesn’t sound forgiving.’
Ritchie held the phone away from his mouth, swore under his breath and said to Bec: ‘If you can find it in yourself to forgive him in any way, it would be a good thing to do.’
Later, Ritchie’s assistant brought him a copy of Val’s newspaper and drew his attention to a two-page spread under the headline SCIENCE’S GOLDEN COUPLE. There was a large photograph of his sister and Alex, made over, styled and primped, grinning smugly on what appeared to be a velvet chaise-longue. They looked almost regal, Ritchie thought. He couldn’t bear to read the text. The smaller photos, scattered across the pages, told him all he wanted to know about the kind of bollocks Val’s reporter had written. There was Saint Rebecca, in white, of course, bending over a big-eyed African child. There was Saint Alex, in a lab coat of the inevitable angelic colour, standing over a patient who was gazing up at him as if Alex was going to save his life, which perhaps he was, but still. Saints, Ritchie felt, should be obscure and humble until their day of martyrdom. And Bec and Alex weren’t saints. Ritchie would only have to do a little digging, he was sure, and he would find their other side. The way Val was setting his sister up for a fall was diabolical, and yet there was something about it that made him want to laugh, her innocence, her ignorance that her brother was to thank for this celebrity. Once Val’s paper had established the legend of Bec and Alex, others followed.
Ritchie thought about suicide as a way out. But he had always flinched at the proximity of possible harm, the edges of train platforms, the mere presence of razor blades in the same room. He was afraid of pain; he feared mess, he feared fear, how he’d feel if he’d sliced open his wrists and watched the blood well out of them into the bath or how the belt would feel when it tightened round his throat. He thought about confessing everything to Karin and asking her to forgive him, for the sake of the children and for the memory of their happiness together, the good things they had done. But these weren’t plans. Ritchie didn’t imagine killing himself or confessing what he’d done because he thought he would do these things. It was a personal art, a way to dilute his intentions in a nobler current, to make himself feel better about whatever it was that he was actually going to do. But he didn’t know what he was going to do, and the deadline Val had given him was only a couple of months away.
At the beginning of May, Ritchie heard that Val had gone mad. At first it was gossip in pubs and clubs. Then there were snatches on the Internet and paragraphs in Private Eye. Val had, it was alleged, sent an email to every member of the paper’s staff, to the entire board of directors and to the proprietor, saying, ‘When was the last time you cunts prayed to almighty God?’ Another story was that he’d gobbed on the news editor in a meeting and ranted about how his myrmidons were hypocrites who whored and lied and cheated on their expenses. The trigger for his rage was an edition of the paper that featured a denunciation of the government’s lax attitude towards fiends who preyed sexually on children, opposite an unrelated article speculating over how much money a fifteen-year-old tennis player would make as a professional model. The story was accompanied by a picture that could only have been taken by the photographer lying on the ground and shooting up between the girl’s legs. There were stories saying that Val had left the paper ‘by mutual agreement’. Then the stories dried up. Ritchie asked around, masking his raging hunger to know, and found out that Val’s behaviour had crossed the line into clinical insanity. He’d been sectioned. He’d been put away.
Val’s physical attack on him, which Ritchie had managed to put out of his mind, was now safe to mull over. It made sense as the act of a madman, as did Val’s peculiar referral to himself in the third person. ‘Mr Oatman does get carried away sometimes,’ Val had said. The sense of reprieve made Ritchie weak and weepy. He’d woken up into this nightmare for so many mornings, and now it turned out that it had been a sick man’s dream. Ritchie knew that whoever had betrayed him – perhaps Nicole herself, perhaps Louise – might betray him again. He supposed that Val had confided in others. Yet because he wanted it so much he began to hope that he would not be exposed. He bumped into the new editor, who seemed decent, at a party. You could never tell with journalists, of course, but he was friendly, normal. It was as if Val had never existed. Ritchie began to drink less and had dinner with Bec and Alex at a nice restaurant in Clerkenwell. He kept his cool. He made them laugh. He didn’t mention the O’Donabháin film, and began to think that, over time, he could wear Bec down about it merely by being pleasant.
The season finale of Teen Makeover was a wonderful night; the winner was a sweet fourteen-year-old boy they’d put in a beautifully tailored suit, a short-arsed chap with red lips, huge cow-eyes and a voice like caramel. The studio audience, it seemed to Ritchie, was superbly picked for brightness, enthusiasm and prettiness, and the new guidelines he’d set for what they should wear gave the cheering, jumping mass of teeth and hair and slim bodies a vibe of hysterical wholesomeness the BBC was sure to like. Five million people watched. A million voted. At the party afterwards Ritchie hardly left Karin’s side. He stood at the innermost of concentric rings of power and celebrity, where people came up to them as if they were king and queen, and Ruby and Dan played with Lazz and Riggsy around them like princes and princesses of the blood.
A few days later Ritchie had Midge over. They kicked a football around with Dan and went upstairs. Ritchie wanted to play Midge some rare Willie McTell but Midge couldn’t sit still. He kept reaching inside his t-shirt sleeve and scratching his shoulder. He wrinkled his nose and flexed his forehead as if he was wearing glasses that didn’t fit.
‘Ever heard of the Moral Foundation?’ he as
ked Ritchie.
‘Eighties electro-pop,’ said Ritchie. He was sitting on the floor by the record player, surrounded by sleeves and vinyl discs. ‘Here’s one he recorded as Red Hot Willie Glaze.’
‘The Moral Foundation,’ said Midge. ‘It’s a website. It’s the fucking celebrity secret police online. Are you sure you haven’t heard of it? They run a scandal every Sunday at six a.m. They’ve been going for weeks now. Every Sunday morning somewhere in the country some poor cunt’s up before dawn, pressing refresh on his browser, waiting to see his life destroyed.’
Ritchie stuck out his lower lip and tilted the record, watching the light break up in the grooves etched by Blind Willie’s voice. He didn’t want to listen to Midge. He wanted to listen to the scratchy howl of a long-dead alcoholic guitarist who’d sung his sorrows and his sins into a microphone and then died. He wanted hard-luck stories with endings, sealed by death. But Midge wouldn’t stop talking.
‘It’s your sister’s ex who’s behind it. Val Oatman. He’s the grey eminence.’
‘I thought he was in the loony bin,’ said Ritchie.
‘You don’t go there now,’ said Midge. ‘It comes in a bottle. You don’t go into the loony bin. It goes into you, three times a day before meals. I don’t know if he ever really lost his marbles. Have you honestly not heard about this? Everyone’s talking about it. That’s how that ManU player got nailed last week.’
The Foundation’s modus operandi, Midge told him, was to contact its target and tell them that a particular day had been set aside for a revelation ‘concerning you or someone close to you’.
‘That’s what they say,’ he said. ‘“Concerning you or someone close to you.” But they don’t tell you what the revelation is, or who it is, whether it’s you, or your partner, or your kid, God forbid. And they say, “Do you wish to supply information?” They’ve got a whole fucking system. One of my client’s had the treatment.’
‘Lazz?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. The less you know the better. But yeah, one of my clients got the call. He, or she, has a skeleton in his closet. Who doesn’t? They were fucking clever. They wouldn’t say exactly what they knew, but they gave enough hints that he, or she, thought they couldn’t risk it. D’you mind if I smoke in here?’
‘Yes,’ said Ritchie. ‘Have another beer. What did he do?’
‘Or she.’
‘Or she.’
‘What did he do? He shopped someone else, what d’you think?’
‘It sounds like blackmail.’
‘It’s a grey area, apparently. It’s all to do with how specific they are.’
‘He didn’t shop another one of your clients?’
‘Do I seem like a fucking doormat to you? No, of course not.’
Two weeks later Ritchie was alone in his office early in the morning when his mobile rang with a call from a blocked number.
‘Mr Shepherd?’ The woman had a slight Essex accent. She spoke with great confidence. ‘This is Maggie calling from the Moral Foundation. Is it convenient to talk now?’
‘No,’ said Ritchie.
‘We’ll continue to call you, Mr Shepherd, until you have time.’ The woman paused, then went on. ‘Are you aware of the Foundation’s work, Mr Shepherd?’
‘No.’
‘We’re a not-for-profit organisation, set up to make the public aware of immoral behaviour by prominent people.’ She spoke quickly and without any dramatic inflection, like a cabin assistant making a safety announcement.
‘You’re a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, dustbin-rummaging scandal sheet.’
‘So you are aware of our work.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Do you have a pen and paper handy, Mr Shepherd? I’d like you to write some things down for me. The first thing is a date. It’s the twenty-eighth of February next year. Do you have a note of that, Mr Shepherd?’
‘Why the hell should I? Who do you think you are?’
‘It’s important that you know the date, Mr Shepherd. On that day, at six a.m., we shall be publishing, on our website, information about immoral behaviour, concerning you or someone close to you. It will concern one or the other, but not both. Do you understand?’
‘What if I haven’t done anything wrong?’
‘I’m not authorised to discuss what you might or might not have done, Mr Shepherd. I’m just informing you that on the twenty-eighth of February—’
‘Isn’t there a law that says a man’s supposed to be told what he’s accused of?’
‘If you’ve done something wrong, Mr Shepherd, you must know what it is. If you are a good and righteous man you have nothing to worry about.’
‘Can I speak to Val?’
‘Mr Oatman doesn’t take calls, Mr Shepherd.’
‘Tell me what you’re going to write about me.’
‘I’m not authorised to discuss what you might or might not have done, Mr Shepherd. I can only suggest you look at our website to see examples of notable people we’ve caught sinning in the past. In your case I can only give you a hypothetical example of the kind of thing we might know about you. It might be, for example, that we know you had sex with a child who appeared on your show. But I must stress that’s a hypothetical example.’
‘If Val’s so holy, why’s he set himself up to make judgements on us, as if he were God? Isn’t that some kind of sin?’
‘You’d have to ask Mr Oatman about that, Mr Shepherd.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘Mr Oatman doesn’t take calls. I have to give you a code, Mr Shepherd.’
‘What code?’
‘Can you write it down for me, Mr Shepherd? It’s very important. It’s A35ZX47. That’s your code.’
‘Why should I write down your fucking code?’
‘Please don’t use profanity, Mr Shepherd, it won’t help you. You’re under no obligation to write the code down. But you need it to verify your identity if you choose to guarantee your exclusion from Foundation scrutiny by giving us information on the moral failings of another person close to you.’
‘Such as who?’
‘I can only give you a hypothetical example,’ said Maggie. ‘A hypothetical example would be if you had a prominent sibling. A brother or a sister.’
‘I know what sibling means, you condescending bitch,’ said Ritchie.
‘Please don’t use profanity, Mr Shepherd. It’s out of keeping with your status.’
‘You know I don’t have a brother.’
‘Would you like me to repeat the code, Mr Shepherd?’
‘You’re the sinner! You! Trying to get me to betray my sister to save myself. You can tell Val I won’t do it. Write what you like about me. I’ll see you in court.’
‘Would you like me to repeat the code, Mr Shepherd?’
‘Tell me if you like, it won’t make any difference,’ said Ritchie, and wrote it down.
51
Bec wasn’t aware of being happy that spring. She only thought about it when one of her friends told her she seemed happy, or when she noticed a man watching her curiously in the street and realised she’d been walking with a smile on her face.
Her paper reporting on the trial of the malaria vaccine was published and although it still seemed to her that it was a failure, everyone else appeared to think half-immunity for infants was a worthwhile thing. Multiple vaccines, that was the buzz; they’d overlap. Melinda Gates called to congratulate her. Vaccine company reps and panjandrums from the WHO sprinkled themselves into her diary.
The centre arranged dozens of interviews, and for a few days old friends who’d lost touch sent messages to say that they’d seen her on a website or in a magazine or heard her on the radio. It seemed to Bec that Alex never had to go into a supermarket and see a stack of newspapers with his face on the front of every one, as she had. Bec didn’t understand why they couldn’t use a photograph of a sad African child in the way they usually did. In each interview, Bec told the journalists that they sh
ould talk to the Tanzanians. They wrote down the phone numbers and email addresses of Issa, Mosi and Mbita, but if they did contact them, nothing they said ever appeared.
Alex told Bec the covenant in Harry’s will was so ingeniously worded that, if they didn’t live in the house, it would stand empty. There seemed nothing to do except move in.
Matthew took everything away, apart from the wine, which Harry had bequeathed to the new tenants. One bottle came in a box addressed to Bec personally. Chateau Lynch Bages, Grand Cru Classé, Pauillac; it was dated 1972. A note that came with it read:
My dear Bec, I wanted you to try this, harvested in the year my favourite son was born. I wish I could be there to drink it with you. I’ll take ties of wine over ties of blood any day of the week. Your oblivious uncle-in-love,
Harry
She read the note several times, folded it and put it away somewhere safe without showing it to Alex. She asked him what year Matthew had been born.
‘1971. Why?’
‘So he’s a year older than you? I just wondered.’
Alex and Bec’s possessions diffused rapidly through the house. Their books took up barely a quarter of the bookshelves and they didn’t have curtains. They liked the bareness of the rooms, the few items they had spread out in a house of white walls and floorboards whose varnish was wearing thin.
