He snorted. ‘I doubt that.’
‘Why me?’ she burst out. ‘I’m not even a journalist. I’m an editor.’
He shrugged. ‘I guess you qualify because of that story you did on Lejeune.’
‘That wasn’t a story! That was an “As Told To”!’ It was a wail.
‘Well, don’t bother telling me. I guess you just tangled with the wrong guy.’ He smiled nastily. ‘I’m sure you can defend yourself. That’s a great bunch of claws you’ve got there. Though if they’ve got anything too hot on you, I think you’re right about the editorship. But then, if he’s implicated in your little extra-curricular romps too, I doubt if he’ll stay in this country at all with such a blot on his copybook. He’ll sell up and go into cable and satellite somewhere else. None of us will have jobs here then – it won’t just be you.’
She couldn’t resist it. ‘And what will you do next, David? Go and get a cushy gig with Levin Brothers?’
He gave her a look that made her shiver with lust. ‘That’s all over, as if you didn’t know.’
‘So you need a fuck?’ She got up and in a flash was out of her houndstooth skirt and her Keturah Brown black lace underpants. She leaned against the wall in her silk stockings, silk suspender belt, black heels and black leather, sticking out her pubis.
‘You disgust me,’ he said quietly, going out and leaving the door wide open.
She got back into her lower clothes hastily, but not fast enough to prevent Max Sadkin from seeing a sight which quickly replaced Serena Soixante-Neuf as the main feature of his sweetest dreams. She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands, dizzy with desire and worry. Lejeune on the warpath, and she was still thinking about sex. She didn’t know what had got into her.
If only it had been David Weiss.
Susan lay on her stomach on the living-room floor wearing a cotton nightshirt, waiting for Rupert Grey’s return appearance on the Jack Black Show and eating a Pot Noodle with her eyes closed in delight. After the years of designer cuisine which had been her exclusive diet, supplemented with Marks & Spencer’s sublime sandwiches, the Pot Noodle tasted impossibly exotic and wholesome.
Matthew said he was having an affair, but she knew he was really just working late, as usual. Fancy trying to make her jealous! As if you could be sexually jealous of your teddy bear . . .
Jack was going through his usual lame routine with the sound down: raising an eyebrow, parading jokes so old they should have a preservation notice slapped on them and cracking up his audience with monotonous regularity. They loved him passionately and Susan thought that it might be his very banality which endeared him to people. She’d noticed this in many entertainers and immediately began to think in headlines – CALL OF THE MILD. By Sean Macauley.
‘Ladies and gentleman, without further ado, please welcome back our very own – well, he must belong to somebody! – singing sensation of the year, and you saw him here first – RUPEE!’
To the strains of ‘Too Young’ Rupert walked on. But something was different. Everything was different. For a start, he was walking: not wiggling, prancing or sashaying, as was his wont. He was wearing no feathers, no lamé and no lipstick, but a sober slacks and sweater ensemble which could have come from British Home Stores. And, even more incredibly, Rupert wasn’t pouting. Was he sick? A terrible thought struck her – had he sprained his lips? In which case, his career was surely over.
The audience, a good half of whom were the teenage fans who called themselves Rupettes, gasped. One girl, obviously the leader of her pubescent peer-group pack, began to sob loudly.
Jack Black whistled softly. ‘Well, Rupee . . .’
‘Please, Jack, call me Rupert. I was christened Rupert Grey. Rupert . . . is my Christian name.’ The accent on the denomination was unmistakable and Susan sat up quickly, spilling her Pot Noodle on the Persian rug which had come from Raymond Bernadout and was Matthew’s pride and joy.
‘Rupert, you told me earlier that you came here tonight specially to talk about your recent experiences . . .’
Rupert held up a hand firmly. There was nothing limp about that wrist any more. ‘No, Jack. About my recent rebirth.’
Jack raised both eyebrows and looked at the audience. They cracked up.
‘You were recently born again, Rupert?’
‘Yes, Jack.’ Rupert waited serenely for Black’s fans to desist. In the old days he would have stamped his platform-booted foot and flounced off camera. ‘Introducing me, Jack, you joked that I must belong to somebody. Well, until recently, I didn’t. Like a lost lamb I wandered the backstreets of the city being used and abused by all sorts or men—’ The crowd gasped. ‘From the highest to the lowest.’
Susan wondered whether he was going to baptize his dirty linen on prime-time TV.
‘Like a lamb to the slaughter I went to their sumptuous homes when their wives were away.’ Even in his hour of confession, Rupert couldn’t admit to having had a bunk-up in the Elephant and Castle. Some things never change. ‘I knew grief. But now I know Jesus. And I’ve come home. I’ve given myself to him.’
He’s about the only one you hadn’t got around to, Susan thought grimly. What did this change of heart mean to Rupert’s pact with her? He probably looked on it as a pact with the Devil in his current frame of mind.
‘And when did this wondrous occurrence take place?’ asked Jack Black respectfully.
‘Two weeks ago. Two weeks and one day. I was in Spain promoting my latest single, “Sweets From A Stranger” – it’s my own composition,’ he said pointedly. One in the eye for Gary Pride. ‘It was ten minutes to airtime. The biggest live pop show in southern Europe. And then – it happened.’
‘You found Jesus?’ said Jack Black reverently.
‘No – my hairdryer fused. My lucky hairdryer – the one I always use before I perform. I was distraught. I yelled that I couldn’t go on, that life was a sick joke. And then I heard a voice.’
The crowd murmured.
‘The voice, which was very deep and masculine, said “Rupert. Don’t worry. You will get your hair dry. Trust me.” And when I tried my hairdryer again, it worked.’
The audience applauded.
‘Yes,’ affirmed Rupert. ‘It worked. And in those moments, I gave myself to Jesus.’
‘Why do you suppose Jesus spoke to you about your hairdryer, of all things, if you don’t mind me asking, Rupert?’
‘Well, I couldn’t swear to it.’ Rupert looked as thoughtful as it was possible for him to look. ‘But from the pictures I’ve seen of him, he seems to have had a little trouble with his hair, too.’
In the audience, the adults cracked up and the teens swooned and screamed. Obviously Rupert’s conversion was going to cause them no philosophical problems. Susan remembered the fiercely Mormon Osmond brothers from her youth; girls had gone crazy for them. Forbidden fruit and all that jazz – literally, in Rupert’s case.
‘So from this moment in time,’ continued Rupert triumphantly, ‘I am a new man, born again. I have ordered my record company to withdraw “Sweets From A Stranger” from the shops, and instead I plan to record a concept album dealing with the anguish and temptations of the young Christian in the modern business, which makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like Marks & Spencer. It will be called Forbidden Fruit. Furthermore, I have decided to handle my career myself and plan to dismiss my alleged manager – a real money-changer in the temple of my career, if ever there was one—’
Susan groaned, and began to count. At the beat of eleven, the phone rang and Gary Pride’s voice shrilled on to her answerphone: ‘Susan, gel, can you believe what this little bender’s pulling? I’m being murdered on live TV in front of more people than anyone since Lee Harvey Oswald! Call back soonest, Gaz.’
‘But that’s not important,’ Rupert went on, frowning slightly. ‘The real reason I’m here tonight, Jack, is to make my peace with a man I have wronged. Do you mind?’
‘Be my guest.’ Black’s eyebrows went into orbit.
>
‘Hello out there.’ Rupert leaned forward. The camera still loved him. ‘I can’t call you by name, but you know who you are. And so does Jesus. You wronged me, but I have wronged you, or at least threatened to. And two wrongs don’t make a right – they make’ – He paused dramatically – ‘a bigger wrong. I want to say that I forgive you and so does Jesus. I hope you forgive me. Let bygones be bygones. And let those who seek to profit from our trespasses against each other do their worst – God is on our side. I will never act against you. Goodnight, and goodbye.’ Rupert sat back composedly in his seat and looked at Jack Black. ‘Thank you, Jack. May I sing now?’
‘Certainly, Rupert. And what are you going to do for us?’
‘Well, Jack, unfortunately the songs for Forbidden Fruit have not been written yet, although I have designed the cover. So I’ll have to sing a song pre-dating my salvation.’ He stood up. ‘This is the B-side of “Sweets From A Stranger” – “Baby, Bite My Bum”.’
‘So you see, darling, it’s pointless to pretend that you can do anything macho like bluff us out or negotiate,’ said Ingrid Irving, biting into a cream cheese sandwich at Brown’s Hotel in Dover Street. ‘Because, to be common and nasty about it, we’ve got all the aces.’
Susan stared at a stained-glass window and offered up a prayer for something sharp to say. A stiff quip was the stiff upper lip of the urban modern, signifying insouciance and no surrender. ‘Really, darling. All the aces, eh? Well, you’ve certainly got a few good diamonds, and if you count your swarthy sidekick you’ve even got a spade. But you certainly don’t have a heart – and I can’t think offhand of any club that would have you.’ She smiled to herself and sipped her Earl Grey.
Ingrid laughed sweetly, but she was stung. ‘Keep it up, sweetie – you’re going to wisecrack your way on to the front page very soon. Or rather, on to the supplement centrespread.’ She paused for effect, chewing on a crustless cucumber sandwich. ‘And I do mean spread.’
‘OK.’ Susan put down her teacup and drew off her Cornelia James gloves. ‘Let’s stop sharpening our claws and messing about. What exactly have you got on me?’
Ingrid laid her Chanel gloves on the table. ‘The works. The tattoo, for a start. If you deny it, and sue, you’ll have to show your forehead. Either the court will see SOLD in black and white, or they’ll see a dirty great scar, which is just as incriminating. The tattoo, for a start, is going to be pretty hard to explain.’
‘OK, it’s an embarrassment. But who’s to know it’s not a private joke between some man and myself?’
‘Exhibit B. Her name is Thalia.’
‘That bitch!’
‘She sends you her love, too. She claims you had various forms of sexual congress with six Brazilian prostitutes for the eyes of Tobias Pope in Rio earlier this year.’
‘I see.’
‘Exactly. Then we have a testimony from one Washington Brown that you were travelling in South Africa with Mr Pope a month later.’
That dirty, washed-up has-been. ‘Sorry to point it out, Ingrid, but I work for Mr Pope. I’m allowed to travel with my employer on business, aren’t I?’
‘Of course, darling. I go for wet weekends with Mark in Manchester all the time, and everything’s perfectly above board. But having proof of what you got up to in Rio, it doesn’t take a Mensa man to guess what you were up to in Sun City, for heaven’s sake. The place is a brothel with roulette wheels.’
‘I see.’
‘I also believe you have a recent New York stamp on your passport. Constantine says he smells a fish – lesbian sex, with about three dozen women, and he can see a two-way mirror.’
‘He must have very good eyesight.’ Susan sighed and replaced a glazed strawberry tart on the cake-stand. She’d lost her appetite. ‘OK. What do you want?’
‘I want to be first,’ said Ingrid with admirable simplicity. ‘I want to be the youngest-ever female newspaper editor in this country, which means the world. Mark’s leaving for Hong Kong next year, and there’ll be a big reshuffle on the Comm. I know I’m in with a chance, and I know he’s going to recommend me to the board. I want to be first, and you’re the only obstacle. So I want you to resign.’
‘I see. And if I don’t?’
Ingrid laughed. ‘Susan, I don’t think you fully understand. You can resign, and leave on your feet, and get a good job in magazines – any of them would welcome you with open arms. Or you can refuse and let me go ahead with my story. Then, you’ll have to leave on a stretcher. You’ll be a joke, a dirty joke. You’ll be a cinch for a job at Madame Claude’s, but no newspaper worthy of the name would touch you. And Pope, what with his heart set on a cable franchise – isn’t it funny how that word sounds like some sort of cream cake? – won’t touch you with a six-foot dildo; he’ll sell up before you can say SOLD.’ Ingrid was making short work of a potted meat sandwich, which was highly appropriate under the circumstances, and she smiled as though the black ball had just dropped into the net. ‘Susan, you understand; you’re as ambitious as I am and in opposite circumstances you’d do the same. I ask you as a meritocrat, what’s the point in neither of us getting our heart’s desire? I could run the story out of spite regardless, and you’d lose your job anyway. What I’m doing now is giving you the chance to walk away instead of crawl. To resign honourably and save face.’ She smiled again. ‘Because we’re women. And I think women should stick together – don’t you?’
FIFTEEN
‘There’s a man here,’ hissed Matthew, intercepting her at the front door. ‘A strange man. He won’t go. I had to let him in because he was leaning on the bell and yelling at the top of his voice. The Adamses came out to see what was going on, and the Wises. I’ve never been so—’
She pushed past him, her heart missing a beat. Lejeune? DAVID? The description pretty much fitted him. No such luck; it was Gary Pride, gazing at her with all the betrayed loyalty of a whipped puppy.
‘Hello, gel. Why didn’t you call back?’
‘Did you call me, Gary? I didn’t get the message. Damn that girl of mine.’ She busied herself taking off her raincoat. ‘Would you like a drink?’
He made a retching noise. It was reassuring to see that even in his hour of loss and confusion he was as urbane as ever. ‘Leave it out. I’ve had a fucking skinful.’ He stood up, swaying. ‘What I want – right now – is a guarantee that you’ll get that little bender back for me.’
‘There’s nothing I’d like more, Gary.’ Susan poured herself a large J&B. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t do that. Rupert is his own person.’
‘Bollocks!’ He belched. ‘He’s been brainwashed by the God Squad! Can’t your paper do some investigative story on it – nap him back and de . . . deprogramme him?’ He laughed. ‘I’ll deprogramme him. With a fucking pickaxe handle!’
‘That’s the Moonies, Gary. You can’t do that to a Christian.’
‘Oh, no?’ He smiled at her. ‘Susan, gel, we’re friends, aren’t we?’
‘I hope so, Gary.’
‘Right. Now, you were very keen on me handling this little bender, as I remember. So keen that you offered to get me back Candy and her crew if I helped you – an offer I graciously didn’t take up seeing as young Rupee was such a smash hit and that all they ever gave me was the pip. But Candy’s a Pope property, which meant that Pope had to be getting something out of me making Rupee. I can’t quite put my finger on what. But I’ll tell you this for nothing, gel – I might be green, but I ain’t grass-coloured. I saw that penitence routine young Rupee did – and all that stuff about people who seek to make trouble. Now I can’t prove it, but I know you, Sue – and you’re trouble. I’d say whatever young Rupee had been asked to do, he was asked by you.’ Suddenly he looked sober, or was it just shrewd? ‘Am I right?’
‘Come now, Gary. We’re both adults. What do you expect me to admit to?’
‘I’m not sure. I haven’t been thinking that clear. But pretty soon, I’m going to start thinking. I’m going to start thinking very h
ard if my time isn’t occupied, know what I mean? The Devil finds work and all that.’
‘I see.’ Was she ever sick of saying that. Zero maintained that seeing the other man’s point of view was the start of moral decline, and Susan was beginning to see what she meant.
‘Yeah, the Devil finds work. It’s true, that. Me, I’m a workaholic, you could say.’ He was warming, like a hot toddy, to his subject. ‘When I’ve got work to do, I don’t give a damn what other people get up to, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the couriers. Live and let lech, I say.’ He frowned. ‘But when I’m forced to be idle . . . I don’t know. Something happens. I come over all moral. I guess it’s to do with me roots.’ He threw back his shoulders. ‘The English working class are a highly moral people.’ This was a line left over from his prole pop-star days, Susan recognized dimly. ‘And like . . . it’s a morality thing with me. If I hear something that my supposed elders and betters are getting up to, I feel I’ve got a moral duty to pass it on to whom it may concern.’ His eyes lost their spiritual cast and fastened on her greedily. ‘Get my drift, gel?’
‘I’m beginning to, Gary.’ She most certainly was.
‘I’ve been around, Sue, y’see? I especially been around that gaff in Lowndes Square with Candy some nights when the sister of ’ers has been nodding out. She’s got a loose mouth on her, that Caroline, as well as everything else. And I’ve kept my head, when all around me were getting stoned out of theirs – that’s Kipling, you know. Yeah, I’ve picked up a few things, sitting there drinking ponce-water when they’ve been getting smacked up to the gills.’ He smiled. ‘Are you receiving me, Sue?’
‘I think so, Gary.’
‘Right, then. That’s settled. You know which side your croissant’s buttered, gel. I’ll lay it on the line: you got me Rupee, you can get him back. Or if not him – because to be frank, now the God Squad have got him, he’ll never write another decent pop song again – then another one like him. Pop stars, they’re all the same. Come and go. But you got an eye for talent.’ He leered alarmingly. ‘That’s ’cos you’re talent yourself. Fancy a bunk-up?’
Ambition Page 20
