Neurotica

by Sue Margolis

  In the end she did neither. She simply said that he was obviously fond of tinkling the ovaries, but if he'd finished tinkling hers, she wouldn't mind having them back. He withdrew his hand as if he had touched scalding water.

  What I'll do then, if it's all right with you,” Reenie continued, “is fax the gentleman your details, and then if he is agreeable we should think about arranging an initial tayte-a-tayte for the two of you. Does that sound acceptable to yourself?”

  Anna was miles away. She was imagining surgeons in gowns and masks taking it in turns to massage her inner thighs with K-Y jelly.

  “Are you still there, Anna deah? . . . Ay was just wondering if that arrangement would be acceptable?”

  Anna confirmed that indeed, it would be.

  C H A P T E R T W E L V E

  FOR THE FOURTH TIME THAT DAY, Dan sat in one of the cubicles in the Vanguard gents breathing rapidly and heavily into a Pret à Manger brown paper bag. Once again the desperate urge to take his blood pressure, combined with the knowledge that he no longer possessed his electronic sphygmomanometer, had caused him to hyperventilate.

  As his blood oxygen levels gradually returned to normal and his head stopped swimming, he took his face out of the bag. At the same time he reassured himself that although he was experiencing the odd setback, he had over the last couple of days made excellent progress in his attempts to live without his medical appliances. His panics about not being able to take his blood pressure or test his urine for sugar were undoubtedly becoming less frequent.

  Dan also noticed he was developing fewer symptoms than usual. In fact, apart from the malignant melanoma on the back of his hand, which the helpful lady pharmacist in Boots had diagnosed as a liver spot, he had in the last forty-eight hours experienced no worrying symptoms at all.

  He smiled a triumphant smile. Then he folded up the Pret à Manger bag and slipped it inside his jacket pocket, just in case he needed to use it again.

  Dan sauntered back to his desk, picked up the phone to check his voice mail and at the same time downed the last inch of his decaf, which had become lukewarm while he was in the gents. There was one message. This was from a mate at the Standard offering to buy him lunch the following week. He put down the phone and screwed up his face, not as a reaction to the taste of tepid coffee, or because he didn't want to have lunch with his mate from the Standard, but because he was suddenly despondent. Derek Foster should have got back to him by now.

  Derek was in his seventies, and although he had officially retired from journalism, he still knocked out a couple of thrillers a year, mainly whodunits based round the Stock Exchange. A few months ago he began submitting a small investor column to the Vanguard. Dan had been so impressed that he had commissioned it as a regular fea- ture.

  Dan had taken to him from their first meeting. He found it almost impossible to believe that this easygoing piss artist was once the most feared news editor in Fleet Street.

  In the sixties, when he ran the newsdesk at the Courier, it was said that no other news editor in the country was capable of keeping a check on the whereabouts of his reporters like Derek Foster. No matter where they were, or what time of day it was, Foster could root them out.

  This was due to him invariably having about his person his battered red exercise book. This contained every number of every public phone in every journalist's haunt from Costello's Bar in New York to the Plaka Taverna in Nicosia. Fleet Street legend had it that the night the Six-Day War ended in Israel in 1967, Derek knew exactly where in Tel Aviv the reporters would go to get pissed and laid, and roughly what time they would leave and what time they would be passing a particular public phone box on the beachfront. At two-fifteen in the morning he rang the number and let it ring continuously. A very drunk but curious Courier reporter answered the phone and was told by Derek to sober up and get his arse to LA by the next day because Spencer Tracy had been found dead at his kitchen table by Katharine Hepburn and she might be available for an interview.

  Dan had last spoken to Derek a day ago. They had spent five minutes or so discussing what Derek was planning to put in that week's column, and then, for no reason in particular, Dan found himself telling Derek about Brenda's night with Giles Hardacre, and how Lavender Hardacre was threatening to go to the papers.

  Dan had barely got to the end of the tale when Derek burst into a long and very wicked Sid James–style cackle.

  “No need to go on. I get the picture. If it's dirt you're looking for, look no further.”

  Derek said he was almost positive his son had been at university with Lavender. He remembered being told the story of how, in her final year, she got rolling drunk at the rugby club dinner and did a striptease on the dance floor. The MC had joined in and the pair of them ended up shagging in front of two hundred people.

  “What's more, she continued to put it about after marrying Giles Hardacre. She's been known secretly amongst the Dempster lot for years as Shagger Hardacre. Christ only knows why no newspaper's ever done her over. You'd think it was right up the Mirror's street.”

  Derek said he would double-check with his son, but he was pretty sure he'd got the rugby club dinner story right because you didn't get too many girlies to the pound called Lavender.

  Dan hadn't been in the slightest bit surprised to discover Derek's connection with Lavender Hardacre. Over the years there had been umpteen occasions when he'd got to the bottom of some financial scandal or other after receiving a piece of priceless information from an improbable source. It was Murphy's Law that this kind of luck only occurred, if it occurred at all, after weeks and weeks of fruitless, bollock-breaking phone bashing. What knocked Dan for six was that this was the first time in his career he had achieved such an astonishing result on the first phone call.

  Dan's amazement and self-congratulation were short-lived. Derek had promised to phone his son and get back to Dan in an hour or so. That was yesterday lunchtime. Dan had heard nothing since. By now he was pretty sure Derek had been thinking about a different woman.

  Dan, who had really been looking forward to impressing Brenda with his sleuthing powers, decided he would console himself, instead, with a large slice of the canteen's disgustingly commercial chocolate cake which always came topped with a collapsed hillock of spray-on cream.

  He stood up and checked that his wallet was in his back pocket. He'd walked across the newsroom, and had almost reached the door, when he heard his phone go. Something about the ring, which of course was no different from usual, told him precisely who was calling. He shot back to his desk.

  “Dan, it's Derek here. Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you, mate, but my son has been away for a few days. Only got back last night. Look, this is just to confirm that your lady and mine are one and the same. I reckon that's a very large lunch you owe me. . . .”

  Anna and Brenda stood on the pavement, their noses pressed up against the restaurant window.

  “I can't see a tall fair-haired bloke sitting on his own. Everybody's in twos or fours,” Brenda said, wiping condensation from the glass with the end of her sleeve.

  Anna said she couldn't either. She then announced that she had no intention of hanging around for hours in the dark until he decided to turn up. Reenie Theydon-Bois had promised that Quasimodo would be waiting for her at the Bhaji on the Bush in the Goldhawk Road, just before eight. It was now two minutes past. Anna stood back from the restaurant window and said that if he didn't show up in the next five minutes they might as well go for a drink in the pub opposite and then head off home. She sounded cross and irritated, but Brenda suspected it was just nerves.

  She was right. Anna was still petrified that Quasimodo might be a paranoid schizophrenic. The last time she spoke to Reenie Theydon-Bois she had asked if she could have his telephone number—she was desperate to check him out before meeting him—but Reenie had refused. She was also only prepared to give Anna a vague idea of what he looked like. Anna assumed this was because Reenie was desperate for her
fee and probably never gave much information away because she didn't want to risk putting clients off. All Anna knew about Quasimodo was that he was forty-two, very tall, exceedingly distinguished-looking and blond.

  Earlier that evening, Anna had phoned Dan at the office to tell him that she and Brenda were going out for a girlie dinner and would be back late. Dan decided to save the pleasure of telling them both his good news on the Hardacre front until later.

  By seven o'clock Anna was getting dressed. She was determined not to get too glammed up as she didn't want to give a potential rapist the impression she was gagging to get laid. She decided on jeans and a smart jacket. She had got one leg into her Levis and was just about to hobble onto the landing to call down to Denise and remind her it was Josh and Amy's hairwash night, when Brenda, who had agreed to come on Mission Quasimodo with Anna, came into the room to show off her outfit for the evening.

  Brenda had promised—not before she had raised several objections about how disloyal she felt she was being to Dan—to wait round the corner from the Bhaji on the Bush in her car, mobile phone at the ready, so that Anna could ring for help if Quasimodo proved troublesome. To mark the undercover nature of the mission, Brenda was wearing combat fatigues and had applied a touch of camouflage paint to her face.

  “You know me,” she said, giving Anna a quick twirl. “I couldn't go out on night maneuvers without getting into the spirit of the occasion.”

  Anna was on the point of declaring that Quasimodo's time was up and they should go for a drink across the road when she noticed a very tall chap with a mass of thick fair hair walking alone towards the restaurant.

  “That has to be him,” she said in a screeched whisper. “Start walking. Look casual. Don't attract his attention.”

  The two of them began strolling down the road. After a minute they turned back and resumed their position in front of the restaurant window.

  “Blimey, Brenda,” Anna said, staring in through the glass. “That is one very tall, very blond man.”

  “Yeah, he is gor-geous,” Brenda said, virtually salivating. “Looks exactly like Johnny Weissmuller in those Tarzan films. You can just see 'im in one of those leopardskin miniskirt things.”

  “Brenda, the only thing I can see this guy in is a brown shirt and a swastika armband. He is far too Aryan for my taste. Definitely not my type. Bren, I think I'm going to give this one a miss.”

  “Oh, no you don't!” Brenda's tone was full of command as she found herself warming to her military persona. She was certain Anna was just looking for an excuse to duck out of the meeting. In an instant she had frog-marched her the few paces to the restaurant door.

  “Phone me,” she said, “if he starts goose-stepping around the restaurant, claiming he's only following orders.”

  With that she opened the restaurant door and almost threw Anna inside.

  Anna regained her balance and took a deep, calming breath. The air was the usual popadam palace mix of cumin and cigarettes. She'd eaten at the Bhaji on the Bush a couple of times with Dan. Looking round she noticed it had been redecorated since her last visit. The red flock wallpaper was now a deep petrol blue. Everything else was just as she remembered it: battered chairs covered in burgundy Dralon, a single carnation in a slim white vase on every table, pale-pink linen and, in one corner of the restaurant, underneath a giant, gaudy print of the Taj Mahal at dawn, a cart loaded with stainless-steel pickle pots.

  The tables near the window were taken. The chap Anna assumed to be Quasimodo was sitting at the back of the restaurant, near the bar. Anna adjusted her bag strap on her shoulder and pushed her hair behind her ears. Squeezing past a waiter who was taking an order for six chicken vindaloos with extra chilis from a group of lagered-up blokes in Lacoste shirts and hooped earrings, Anna started walking towards the blond man's table.

  She could see him dunking a piece of popadom into some pale-green yogurt and bringing it towards his mouth. En route, the yogurt began to drizzle down his fingers and drip onto his purple-and-gold silk tie. In a couple of seconds two long milky rivulets were coursing down his front. Realizing what he had done, he began rubbing at the tie with a pink napkin. His mass of straight fair hair was without a trace of gray. It made him look far younger than forty-two. Anna would have said he wasn't a day over thirty-four. She stood next to the table, watching him. He hadn't noticed her.

  “You'll ruin the silk if you carry on like that,” she said by way of announcing herself. She sounded far more assured than she felt. “Quasimodo, I presume. Hi, I'm Anna.” Smiling, she held out her hand.

  “Oh, right, Christ,” he said, clearly flustered, but managing to return Anna's smile. His look of confusion had turned, almost immediately, into one of delight. For a longish moment he surveyed her face. His eyes gazed into hers. They remained there just a moment too long. Finally he appeared to sense her discomfort. His eyes shot down towards the pink napkin, which he was still holding. Then he stood up too quickly, jogging the table as he went. This sent several pieces of cutlery flying onto the floor. He was slim, broad-shouldered and towered over her. Blushing, he leaned across the table and shook her hand.

  “I seem to have got myself into a bit of a pickle.” He chuckled, pushing back some of his hair, which had flopped into his face, and indicating the huge greasy stain. His voice, which was a touch Gordonstoun and the Guards, confirmed Anna's suspicion that it was a Gieves and Hawkes tie.

  “Do sit down. I'm Alex. Alex Pemberton.” He waved his hand towards the chair in front of her. Anna spotted a gold signet ring on his little finger. She also noticed his nails were buffed and manicured. There wasn't a loose end of dried-up cuticle in sight. She lowered herself into the chair. For a paranoid schizophrenic, she thought, Alex Pemberton was certainly very well groomed.

  Anna decided that her first impression of him, outside the restaurant, had been spot on. The man looked like a Nazi. There was no doubt in her mind that the six-foot-three frame, the square jaw, pale-blue eyes and flaxen hair belonged at a Nuremberg rally.

  His was the look she had been brought up to fear and revile. She had been out with twenty or thirty boys before she met Dan. They had all been dark. Even the non-Jewish ones looked vaguely Mediterranean. None of them had been more than five foot ten. Despite Anna's youthful defiance, she had found it hard to shake off her parents' prejudices about all things German. As late as two years ago, when she and Dan had bought a Bosch fridge-freezer, she had felt like a traitor. It had taken her a fortnight to pluck up the courage to tell her father what she'd done.

  The likelihood was, Alex Pemberton had no German blood in his veins whatsoever—and so what if he had?—but this logic made no indentation on Anna's emotions. As far as she was concerned, tonight she would be eating with the enemy.

  While they waited for their drinks, they finished the popadoms and compared notes about Reenie Theydon-Bois. Alex had met her a couple of times and said she was a mercenary old baggage, but otherwise quite straight.

  “So what made you place the Quasimodo ad?” Anna asked. “I mean, it was very funny, but it did occur to me to come armed with a posse of social workers, in case you went barmy during the coffee and After Eights and needed to be sectioned.”

  Alex laughed and explained that he'd placed traditional ads in the past and had ended up with one miserable, lonely woman after another. Nearly all of them, he explained, were the type who'd spent years being martyrs to their husband's infidelities and had finally decided they wanted to get their own back by sleeping with other men.

  “But when it came to it, they just wanted to talk about their husbands' affairs, have a good cry and give me detailed accounts of how they'd tried to top themselves.”

  Anna imagined a long line of sour-faced middle-aged women with perms, calf-length skirts and day returns from Bexleyheath.

  “So you placed the wacky ad in the hope of attracting someone a bit more upbeat.”

  “Something like that,” he said, grinning and pushing back his hair
again, as the waiter delivered two cold Cobras. “Plus writing it reminded me that, hopefully at least, I still possess a sense of humor. I get seriously fed up playing the sober-suited consultant.” He began to fiddle repeatedly with his leather watch strap, twisting it nervously round his wrist in short, sharp half-turns.

  Anna drank some of her beer. Instead of the arrogance she had anticipated in a consultant surgeon, there was a diffidence and charm about Alex which she liked. She eyed his exquisitely tailored charcoal-gray pinstripe with its hand-stitched lapels. The conservative Savile Row suit, the posh tie and gold signet ring gave him a gentlemanly, almost aristocratic air. Old-fashioned words like “dashing” and “debonair” sprang to Anna's mind. She was beginning to see what Brenda was getting at when she said he was gorgeous.

  Although she was still hoping Alex might darken up and shrink a little as the evening wore on, Anna could feel herself slowly letting go of her prejudices.

  She was daring to imagine what it would be like allowing herself to be pounced on by this perfect example of Aryan manhood. Even two years ago such a thought would have appalled her. Now the wickedness excited her. Lust and guilt fought a brief duel in her body. It was no contest. Guilt forgot to bring bullets. There was little doubt left in her mind that she and her rebellious streak were about to boldly go and explore their final sexual frontier. She had a brief image of him giving her an orgasm and then leaping out of bed to click his heels. But it was only brief.