“The rent boy has made his bow to the public,” Sarah Happleshort was continuing, “through the vehicle of his dad. The statement: ‘Daffy is dead sorry for what Mr. Larnsey’s going through. Seems to Daffy he’s a nice enough bloke.’ ”
“Daffy?” the picture editor asked incredulously. “Larnsey’s actually bonking a rent boy called Daffy?”
“Perhaps he quacks when he comes,” the business editor said.
Appreciative guffaws all round. Sarah went on. “We do have, however, a quote from the boy that I think we may want to use as our lead.” And to Sports, who was drawing breath to argue for his asphyxiated cricketer once more, “Come on, Will. Be realistic. We spent six days running Fleming’s death on page one. The story’s stale bread. But this…Think of it with a photo. Daffy speaks to the press. He’s asked about his lifestyle. How does it feel to be doing it in cars with middle-aged men? He says, ‘It’s a living, i’n’t it?’ That’s our headline. With a suitable commentary on page six about what the Tories, through gross mismanagement of the Government and the economy, have brought teenagers to. Rodney can write it.”
“Glad to under any other circumstances,” Rodney said genially. “But this should go out under Dennis’s name. His pen’s mightier than mine by a long shot, and the Tories deserve a thrashing from the master. What say, Den? Are you up for it?” He was popping a piece of an Aero bar into his mouth as he spoke. He arranged his features into an expression of concern when he added, “You look peakish today. Coming down with something?”
Luxford favoured Rodney with a five-second scrutiny. What Rodney wanted to say was “Losing the edge, Den? Your balls on the shrivel?” but he lacked the courage to be so open. Luxford wondered if he had enough dirt filed away to sack the worm as he deserved. He doubted it. Rodney was too slick by half.
Luxford said, “Larnsey takes page one. Run the rent boy photo. Mock me up a copy of the headline with the photo before you run it. Put cricket back in sports.” And he went through the rest of the stories without referring to his notes. Business, politics, world news, crime. He could have looked at his notebook without any loss of respect on the part of the editors, but he wanted Rodney to see and remember who had his fingers on the pulse of what at The Source.
The general shuffle of a meeting’s end ensued, with Sports grumbling about “basic human decency,” and Photo calling into the newsroom, “Where’s Dixon? I need a blow-up of Daffy” to catcalls and quacking. Sarah Happleshort gathered up her papers, joking with Crime and Politics. The three of them headed for the door where they broke ranks for Luxford’s secretary.
Miss Wallace said, “Phone call, Mr. Luxford. I told him earlier that you were in a meeting and tried to take a number from him, but he wouldn’t give it. He’s phoned back twice. I’ve got him on hold.”
“Who?” Luxford asked.
“He won’t say. Just that he wants to talk to you about…the kid.” She removed the flustered look from her face by waving at the air in front of her as if it were filled with gnats. “That’s the expression he used, Mr. Luxford. I assume he means the young man who…the other night…at the train station…” She coloured. Not for the first time Dennis Luxford wondered how Miss Wallace had survived at The Source for so long. He’d inherited her from his predecessor who’d had many good laughs at the expense of her delicate sensibilities. “I did tell him that Mitch Corsico was the reporter working on the story, but he says he’s sure you don’t want him talking to Mr. Corsico.”
“Want me to take it, Den?” Rodney asked. “We don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry off the street phoning in whenever they want to have a chat with the editor.”
But Luxford was feeling his stomach muscles tightening at the possibility implied behind the words wants to talk about the kid. He said, “I’ll take it. Put the call through,” and Miss Wallace walked back to her desk to do so.
Rodney said, “Den, you’re setting precedent here. Reading their letters is one thing, but taking their calls…?”
The phone was ringing. Luxford said, “I appreciate the sentiment, Rod,” as he walked to his desk for the phone. There was always, he admitted, the possibility that Miss Wallace was correct in her assumption, that the caller had information about the rent boy, that the call itself was no more than another intrusion into a busy day. He picked up the receiver and said, “Luxford.”
A man said, “Where was the story, Luxford? I’m going to kill her if you don’t run that story.”
By cancelling one meeting and postponing another, Eve Bowen managed to get to Harrods by five. She’d left her political assistant juggling her schedule, phoning round with apologies and suitable excuses, and casting evaluative looks in her direction as she ordered her car brought round at once. She could have walked from Parliament Square to the Home Office, and Joel Woodward knew it. So he also knew that her terse “Something’s come up. Cancel the four-thirty meeting,” had nothing to do with governmental matters.
Joel would wonder, of course. Her political assistant was nothing if not disturbingly curious when it came to her private affairs. But he wouldn’t ask questions for which she would have to construct elaborate lies in response. Nor would he share with others whatever suspicions he might be harbouring about the nature of the actual phone call that she had indeed received. He might casually ask upon her return, “The meeting went well?” and attempt to read her response for its level of veracity. He might also phone round and check up on her movements, looking for inconsistencies between them and what she said about them. But whatever conclusions Joel reached, he would keep them to himself. He was the embodiment of For Queen and Country, not to mention For Employer, and he liked the questionable importance of his job too much to risk it by garnering her displeasure. To Joel Woodward, it was better to be in the partial know—in a situation in which silence and a significant, meaningful nod to lesser mortals would telegraph his intimacy with the affairs of the Home Office Undersecretary—than to be relegated to a position in which he knew nothing at all and would therefore have to rely upon intellect and performance alone as a means of establishing his position in the office hierarchy.
As far as her driver went, his job was to drive. And he was quite used to transporting her in a single day to places as diverse as Bethnal Green, Mayfair, and Holloway Prison. He would hardly give a thought to an order to take her to Harrods.
He dropped her at the entrance on Hans Crescent. To her “Twenty minutes, Fred,” he responded with a simian grunt. She ducked in the bronze doors where security guards kept watch for terrorists determined to upset the flow of business, and she made for the escalators. Despite the late hour of the afternoon, these were crowded with shoppers, and she found herself sandwiched between three women chador-shrouded from head to foot and a gaggle of Germans loaded down with shopping bags.
On the fourth floor, she weaved through bodywear, swimsuits, girls in straw hats, and Rastafarians to make her way to the trendy pacesetters’ department where—behind a display of black jeans, black tank tops, black bolero jackets, black waistcoats, and black berets—the Way In coffee shop catered to the department’s trend-setting clientele.
Dennis Luxford, she saw, was already there. He’d managed to procure a grey-topped table that was situated in a corner and partially screened by an enormous yellow pillar. He was drinking something tall and fizzy and making a pretence of studying the menu.
Eve hadn’t seen him since the afternoon he had learned she was pregnant. Their paths might have crossed in the intervening ten years—especially once she ventured into public life—but she had seen to it that that did not happen. He had seemed just as happy to keep his distance from her, and since his position as editor first of the Globe and then of The Source didn’t actually require him to rub elbows with politicians if he did not wish to do so, he had never again been present at a Tory conference or at any other occasion where the two of them might meet.
He had changed very little, she saw. The same thick, sandy hair, the s
ame dapper clothes, the same trim figure, the same overlong sideburns. Even—and this as he stood when she reached his table—the same serrulated scar across part of his chin, souvenir of a dormitory fight during his first month at Baverstock School for Boys. They’d compared their facial scars in between bouts of sex in her hotel room in Blackpool more than ten years before. She had wanted to know why he didn’t grow a beard to cover his. He had wanted to know why she wore her fringe overgrown to camouflage hers, a starburst cicatrix that bisected her right eyebrow.
“Dennis,” she said now in greeting and ignored the hand he held out to her. She moved his glass to the opposite side of the table so that he and not she would be facing the interior of the department store. She deposited her briefcase on the floor and sat where he had been sitting. “I can give you ten minutes.” She shoved the menu to one side and said when the waiter appeared, “Coffee, black. Nothing else.” And then to Dennis when the waiter departed, “If you’ve a photographer waiting out there to capture this tender moment between us for tomorrow’s edition, I sincerely doubt you’ll be able to make much of the back of my head. And as I have no intention of leaving the premises in your company, there will be no other opportunity for your reading public to know there might be a connection between us.”
Always a credit to his extraordinary talent at dissimulation, Dennis managed to look disconcerted by her words, she noted. He said, “For God’s sake, Evelyn, I didn’t phone you for that.”
“Please give me some credit for intelligence. We both know where your political loyalties lie. You’d love to bring down the Government. But don’t you think you’re taking a risk that has the potential to destroy your career if your connection to Charlotte is made known?”
“I’ve said from the first that I’d admit to the world I’m her father if that’s what it takes to—”
“I’m not talking about that connection, Dennis. Ancient history is not nearly so interesting as are current events. Surely you know that better than anyone. No, what I’m talking about is a more recent connection than your fathering my daughter.” She gave gentle emphasis to the procreative word and sat back in her chair as the coffee was delivered. The waiter forced the metal plunger down through the granules in the cafetière. He asked Dennis if he’d like another Perrier, and when Dennis nodded his assent, he disappeared to fetch it. While he did so, Dennis studied Eve. His look was one of perplexity, but he made no comment until they were alone again with their drinks some two minutes later.
“There is no more recent connection between Charlotte and me,” he said.
She stirred her coffee thoughtfully and returned his observation of her with her own of him. There appeared to be a beading of perspiration at the edge of his hairline. She wondered what was causing it: the effort at dissembling or the apprehension attendant to successfully carrying this scene off prior to the presses’ beginning their run with tomorrow’s edition of his scurrilous newspaper.
“I’m afraid there is a more recent connection,” she said. “And I’d like you to know that your plan isn’t going to work the way you’d imagined. You may hold Charlotte hostage for as long as you like in an attempt to manipulate me, Dennis, but it’s going to make no difference to the eventual outcome of this situation: You’ll have to return her, and I shall see to it that you’re charged with kidnapping. Which, I dare say, will not do much to enhance your career or your reputation. Although it will, admittedly, make extremely good copy for the newspaper which you will no longer be editing.”
He was keeping his eyes fastened on hers, so she was able to see the quick dilation of his pupils. He, no doubt, was attempting to evaluate her words for their degree of bluff. He said, “Are you mad? I don’t have Charlotte. I’m not keeping Charlotte. I haven’t taken Charlotte. I don’t even bloody know—”
Laughter from the next table interrupted him. Three shoppers had just plopped into the seats. They were vociferously debating the merits of fruit tarts over lemon cake as a suitable energy booster after the exertions of an afternoon at Harrods.
Dennis leaned forward and said tersely, “Evelyn, God damn it, you’d better listen to me. This is real. Real. I don’t have Charlotte. I have no idea where Charlotte is. But someone does and he was on the phone to me ninety minutes ago.”
“So you said,” she said.
“So it was,” he declared. “For God’s sake, why would I make this up?” He picked up his napkin and crushed it in his fingers. He went on once again in a lower voice. “Just listen. All right?” He glanced at the nearby table where the shoppers were opting loudly for the lemon cake all round. He turned back to Eve. He shielded both his words and his face from the restaurant and its occupants, giving her the momentary impression—and nicely done, she thought with a mental salute in his direction—that he felt it as crucial as she that no one know they were meeting. He recounted his supposed conversation with the kidnapper.
“He said that he wants the story in tomorrow’s newspaper,” Dennis said. “He said, ‘I want the facts of your first kid in the paper, Luxford. I want them on page one. I want you to tell the whole story yourself and tell it straight and leave nothing out. Especially her name. I want to read her name. I want the whole bloody story.’ I told him that might be impossible. I told him that I had to talk to you first. I said that I wasn’t the only person involved, that there were the feelings of the mother to be considered as well.”
“How good of you. You always did go in big for the feelings of others.” Eve poured herself additional coffee and added sugar.
“He didn’t buy it,” Dennis said, ignoring her jibe. “He asked when I had ever cared about the feelings of the mother.”
“How prescient of him.”
“Just listen, God damn it. He said, ‘When did you ever care for Mum, Luxford? When you did the deed? When you said “Let’s have a talk.” Talk. Right. What a laugh, you little prick.’ Which is what made me think…Evelyn, it has to be someone who was at the conference in Blackpool. We talked there, you and I. That’s how it began.”
“I know how it began,” she said icily.
“We thought we were being discreet, but we must have put a foot wrong somewhere. And someone out there has been biding his time ever since, waiting for the moment.”
“To?”
“To bring you down. Look.” Dennis shifted his chair towards her. She successfully vanquished the inclination to shift her own chair away. “Despite what you may be thinking about my intentions, this snatching of Charlotte isn’t about bringing down the entire Government.”
“How can you possibly argue that, considering how your newspaper’s been frothing at the mouth over Sinclair Larnsey?”
“Because this isn’t remotely a Profumo-type situation. Yes, the Larnsey case makes the Government look idiotic what with the Recommitment to Basic British Values business, but the Government stands little chance of actually falling. Not because of Larnsey and not because of you. These are sexual peccadilloes we’re talking about. This isn’t an MP lying to Parliament. There are no Russian spies involved. So this isn’t a plot. This is personal. And it’s personal about you and about your career. You’ve got to see that.”
He’d reached across the table impulsively as he was speaking. He’d closed his fingers round her arm. She could feel the heat of his fingers, and it quickly rode up through her veins to burn in her throat. She said, looking past him, “Take your hand off me, please.” And then when he did not move his hand at once, she looked back at him. “Dennis, I said—”
“I heard you.” Still he did not move. “Why do you hate me so much?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. To hate you I’d have to take time to think about you. And I don’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“And you’re self-deluding. Remove your hand from my arm before I douse it with coffee.”
“I offered to marry you, Evelyn. You refused.”
“Don’t recount my history. I know it well enough.”
&nbs
p; “So it can’t be that we didn’t marry. So it must be because you knew I didn’t love you in the first place. Did that offend your puritan principles? Does it still? Knowing you were my sexual peccadillo? Having slept with a man who wanted, at heart, only to fuck you? Or was the act itself not as grave an offence as the enjoyment that went with it? Your enjoyment, by the way. Mine is implicit through Charlotte’s existence.”
She felt the impulse to strike him whip through her arm. Had they not been in so public a place, she would have done so. Her palm longed for a stinging contact with his face.
“You’re despicable,” she said.
He removed his hand. “For which offence? Touching you then? Or touching you now?”
“You don’t touch me,” she said. “You never could.”
“Self-deluding, Eve. Wasn’t that your term of choice?”
“How dare you—”
“What? Speak the truth? What we did, we did, and we both enjoyed it. Don’t rewrite history because you’d rather not face it. And don’t blame me for showing you the only good time you’ve probably had in your life.”
She pushed her coffee cup into the centre of the table. He anticipated her intention by getting to his feet. He dropped a ten-pound note next to his Perrier glass. He said, “This bloke wants the story in tomorrow’s paper. He wants it on the front page. He wants the whole story, start to finish. I’m willing to write it. I can hold up the presses till nine o’clock. If you decide to take this seriously, you know where to find me.”
“The size of your ego was always the least appealing of your personal attributes, Dennis.”
“And yours was a desperate need to have the last word. But you can’t come out on top in this situation. You’d do well to realise that before it’s too late. There is, after all, another life at stake. Beyond your own.”
He turned on his heel and left her.
She found that the muscles of her neck and shoulders had locked on themselves. She kneaded her fingers against them for relief. Everything—everything—she despised in men had its embodiment in Dennis Luxford, and this encounter had done nothing more than reinforce that belief. But she hadn’t clawed her way into her present position by submitting to any male’s attempt at domination. She wasn’t about to capitulate now. He could try to manipulate her with apocryphal kidnapping notes, with fictive telephone calls, with utterly specious displays of even more specious paternal concern. He could try to pluck at the cord of maternal instinct, which he so obviously believed was intrinsic to the female constitution. He could act the part of outrage, sincerity, or political perspicacity. But none of that could obviate the simple fact that The Source, under six months of Dennis Luxford’s aegis, had done everything within its filthy power to humiliate the Government and advance the cause of the Opposition. She knew this as well as anyone with the ability to read. And for Luxford to think—simply because he had managed to involve her daughter—that now Eve Bowen would stand up in public, confess her past sins, destroy her career, and thereby allow another faggot to be placed round the stake upon which the press was intending to incinerate the Government…Nothing on earth could possibly be more ridiculous.
In the Presence of the Enemy Page 11
