Ambition

by Julie Burchill

  Bryan flashed him a condescending smile. ‘Oh no, Dave – that was legit. Public interest as well as human interest; ethics as well as morals. You remember the first rule of popular journalism from when you learned it at the school of hard knocks, don’t you? – ethics is money and morals is sex. Our Lejeune scoop was an ethics story – the sex was a side-dish, as it were.’

  ‘Well, you certainly didn’t leave any on the side of your plate for Mr Manners, did you?’

  Bryan sighed with infinite, weary patience. ‘Dave. What sort of paper d’you think we’re running here?’

  ‘Well, Bryan.’ David Weiss looked serious. ‘I wish I could answer that without sounding rude. All I know is how I’d like the paper to be. You know that old Hays Office maxim from the Thirties about couples on beds keeping one foot on the ground at all times? That’s what I’d like the Best to do. I know that people want escapism, and that they want a little sleaze too. But we shouldn’t either have to be in the clouds with the royal family or in the gutter with Serena Soixante-Neuf all the time. I think we should try to keep one foot on the ground.’

  ‘Suggestions?’ If Bryan O’Brien had moved one more muscle, his set smile would have become a sneer.

  David Weiss looked at Susan. ‘Miss Street. When Anstey was editor, isn’t it right that the Best was something of a campaigning paper?’

  ‘In a modest way, yes. But Charles certainly didn’t rule out anything that smelt of fun. He didn’t think that if it tasted bad and bored you it was necessarily good for you – the take-your-medicine school of journalism.’

  ‘I’m not looking to be one hundred per cent serious – you’ve got me wrong.’ That note of exasperation which Susan had noticed came so quickly into American voices when they couldn’t get their own way had crept into his. ‘Keep the royal family. Keep the sleaze. But can’t we have a little more investigative journalism? A little more campaigning journalism? Are those the only words too dirty for newspapers these days?’

  ‘ ’Course not, Dave. You’re absolutely right, mate.’ He turned to Susan. ‘Sue, I want a big investigative piece on how many Page Three girls aren’t getting it regularly. And then we’ll run a big crusading campaign to match them up with eligible young royal blokes – Edward, Linley and the gang.’ He smiled at David. ‘That the sort of thing you wanted, Dave?’

  Their only answer was the slam of the door.

  ‘Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee,’ said Bryan and they laughed. ‘He’s a bundle of fucking laughs these days. Needs a good seeing to.’

  She shrugged. ‘Not my job.’

  ‘Can you believe its front? Waltzes in here from a book publishers and tells me how to run a newspaper. ME! Fucking colonials.’

  Susan laughed. ‘You say that?’

  ‘Ah, it’s true. The Aussie hates the Pom until the Yank butts in. Then you see what we’ve got in common.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Seeing things on the slant. Whereas they come barging in like a bull in a china shop. Thinking that so long as the bull wears a white hat it doesn’t matter if everything gets smashed to buggery. Look, you know and I know, despite the difference in our ages and backgrounds, that a lot of popular journalism is a joke. But the readers know it’s a joke, and they know that Brit papers tell that joke better than any other popular press in the world. They laugh with us when we tell the joke and they laugh at us when we get our asses sued. Either way they get the last laugh. But a Yank can’t see that. He thinks we’re putting one over on the poor buggers. Why does he think they buy the bloody thing, because we’re at the newsstands with cattle prods? They love being lied to. It makes them feel important.’

  ‘They place a lot of importance on telling the truth over there, Bryan,’ Susan said, getting to her feet. ‘Wee Georgie Washington and the cherry tree. Nixon murdering all those poor people by proxy in Indochina and then getting the sack for telling a fib. They’ve got a passion for honesty.’

  ‘Mmm. That’s a bastard, isn’t it? Talking of which, your pal Moorsom plans to come back with a bang this afternoon. Andrew called from the lobby. He’s tabled another question.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She sat down.

  ‘Never mind.’ He gave her a smile she couldn’t quite decode. ‘This honesty . . . you can’t catch it from toilet seats, can you?’

  Very soon she saw the announcement in the Independent:

  Mr W. Z. Brown

  and Miss C. M. Malaise

  The engagement is announced between Washington Zebedee, son of the late Mr C. Brown and the late Mrs H. Brown of Louisville, Kentucky and Candida Maud, younger daughter of Colonel A. and Lady Sasha Malaise of Somerset.

  Not long after that she turned on the television to see the upper-class white girl of twenty and the battered black man of forty-five sing a smoochy, saccharine shadow of a soft soul song called ‘Born Again Beige’, a hymn to the healing power of love which the pampered girl and the calloused man sang with such conviction that a sentimental Western world wept long and hard enough to turn the record from plastic to platinum.

  And not long after that, Susan received the wedding invitation from Truslove & Hanson at Sherratt and Hughes, announcing a quiet civil ceremony at Chelsea Town Hall, brought forward to accommodate Coffee and Cream’s forthcoming European tour.

  Candida, radiant in black, and Washington, ridiculous in white, greeted her warmly that Saturday morning.

  ‘Hey, Suze.’ Washington looked like the black panther who had got not just the cream but the milkmaid, every well-fed white inch of her.

  ‘Hello, Washington. Congratulations on your record.’

  He shrugged happily. ‘Just beginner’s luck.’

  ‘Washy, don’t say things like that!’ Candida flung herself at Susan. ‘Hi, Susie!’

  ‘You look lovely, Candida.’

  ‘D’you think so?’ She peered down at herself, squeezed into a boned black dress. ‘Hyper Hyper. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s silly to spend a lot on clothes. I can’t believe I was such a little breadhead when you first met me – remember? Lindka Cierach frocks, the Café de Paris, Fuck U – it all seems like such a long time ago!’ She giggled. ‘Now all I care about is making music and fucking Washy!’

  ‘Language,’ said Washington automatically. ‘That’s no way for a special lady to talk on her wedding day.’

  ‘Are your parents here?’

  ‘Oh no. Listen Susie, this is really funny. I told them I was marrying a black man and they were really sweet. And then I told them I was planning to wear a black wedding dress! They freaked! Refused to come. See, they don’t care what you do as long as you remember protocol. And a black wedding dress is not protocol. But we’re going down to stay at their new place in Somerset for our honeymoon, before we go on the road. We had to sell our seat, you know. To Americans.’

  ‘Yes, Caroline told me.’

  ‘Sue!’ Gary Pride, who was doing business as usual, broke off from a bullying phone call and made a thumbs-up sign. ‘Dig you later!’

  ‘Is Caroline here?’

  ‘She’s over there.’ Candida pointed, frowning.

  ‘ ’Scuse us, Susie. We must mingle.’

  Susan turned to look for Caroline and saw a shadow instead. The radiant blonde of the early Eighties soft-focus skinflicks, the hothouse hybrid of Diana and Deneuve was gone, replaced by an ageing waif in a rumpled houndstooth Chanel suit. Her hair was chopped short and ragged, and she was living proof that you can be too thin. She was leaning against a wall, warily and wearily observing the wedding preparations.

  Susan walked over to her. ‘Hello, Caroline.’

  ‘Oh, hi.’ Caroline pulled nervously at her fringe. ‘Haven’t seen you in yonks. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Working hard. How are you?’

  ‘Not fine. Not working hard.’ Caroline laughed. ‘But I’m sure you’d deduced that already. Been seeing much of Tobes?’

  ‘I’ve only seen him once since we had lunch.’

  ‘But I
bet he calls you up a lot, wherever he is.’

  ‘I spoke to him in Munich recently.’

  ‘I spoke to him recently, too. Last week.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Caroline lit a cigarette with shaky hands. Susan didn’t remember her smoking. ‘I’m going to tell you this story, just so you’ll know what kind of man you’re dealing with. I picked up the phone one morning, and his first words were: Caroline, it’s me. Listen. I could have got a lackey or a lawyer to do this, but as we’ve known each other for so many years I thought you deserved better. A more human approach. So I’m telling you myself; pack your things and be out of the flat by Friday. Post the keys through the letterbox. So I said, Why, Toby? And he said, I wish you hadn’t asked that, but because we’ve known each other so long I’ll do you the courtesy of telling you. The reason I want you out is that I need a thirty-year-old junkie with no visible means of support like I need cancer of the rectum. Goodbye.’ Caroline looked at Susan both triumphantly and defeatedly. ‘What do you think of that? – that’s his idea of the human touch.’

  What Susan thought was that if Caroline had welched on her side of the bargain – which had been presumably that she would be the perfect London mistress of a millionaire and that he would support her accordingly – then she deserved nothing better, and to look at her, welched on it royally she definitely had done. But she knew this sort of thinking was highly unsound and masculinist, and she tried to think of a sympathetic comment – ‘That bastard!’ or ‘Men!’ But all that came out, true to form, was, ‘Have you got any money?’

  ‘A bit, I s’pose. A couple of thou left in trust. But nothing serious – it’s all in here.’ She rubbed her left arm resignedly. ‘I’m staying with a friend in Clapham – she was an actress too but she married a racing driver. Now they’re divorced and she’s trying to bring up a kid alone. He’s legged it to Lanzarote. I have to sleep on the sofa and babysit in lieu of rent while Camilla goes out on cattle calls.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘It’s so depressing, I can’t tell you.’

  Susan thought. ‘Can’t you go back to your parents for a bit?’

  Caroline sniggered. ‘Oh, yah. It’s really easy to score in Somerset. I mean, you can just walk into a field and pick it – like scrumping for apples when you’re little. It grows on trees, dontcha know?’ She sighed exaggeratedly. ‘Of course I can’t go to the country.’

  ‘Caroline, I don’t want to sound like a girl-guide leader. But surely the first thing you want to do to get your life back on track is lose your habit?’

  ‘What?’ Caroline looked confused, then thoughtful. ‘Well, no, actually. I don’t think I do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Though her expression remained concerned and sympathetic, Susan was coming to believe more with each minute that Tobias Pope had his head screwed on, not least of all where Caroline Malaise was concerned.

  ‘Well – I haven’t put it into words before, but I’ll try. It’s like – if I kicked the habit, I don’t think I’d exist any more. I shoot up therefore I am. If I wasn’t a junkie, what would I say at parties when people ask me what I do? I’m not an actress. I’m not a mistress. I’m not even a housewife. I’m just a thirty-year-old woman with a past and no future.’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘No, I’m not giving up junk. If I do I’ll disappear.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to say.’ She did, but it was very rude.

  ‘You could offer me a job.’ Caroline almost smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s not that easy.’

  ‘OK.’ She made a show of gathering her gloves, lighter and bag together. Her hands were still shaking. ‘I understand. But you don’t know how lucky you are, coming from where you did. You had everything: poverty, provincialism, no friends in high places. Everything to kick against. Me, I had nothing except what was given to me on a plate. That’s why you’re on the bus and I’m under the wheels.’

  Susan thought that this analysis was a little blurred around the edges, but she let it pass. ‘Didn’t you ever have an ambition, Caroline?’

  ‘Me?’ She paused, pulling on a short, dirty white glove. ‘No, I had money instead. The great thing about ambition is that it doesn’t depreciate or end up in your arm: it’s much more bankable in the long term. Well, shall we join the wedding party?’

  Susan looked at Candida, sashaying into the register office on the arms of Washington Brown and Gary Pride. The three of them were chattering loudly in their comically differing accents – upper-class English, black American Southern and Cockney. They sounded like an idea for a sitcom. But somehow, the three voices were made eerily alike by the same note of satisfaction and anticipation in each.

  ‘Look at them,’ said Caroline softly. ‘A few months ago they were ready and willing to blow Pope’s brains out. If he walked in now, they’d pat him on the back and ask him to be best man. How fast the happy forget.’

  As the plane touched down, Tobias Pope looked up from his papers and wondered for a moment where he was. Rio, Munich, London? Sonya, Sigrid, Susan? He hoped it was London.

  It was, the weather assured him as he stepped out of the plane, descending the steps slowly with a tall black twin either side of him. When one of his best bodyguards had died after falling out of a window into an empty swimming pool during a crack party in a Sun City hotel, the chance of getting two perfect physical specimens for the price of one had been irresistible.

  And the twins were as quick on the draw as they were on the erection, as good at fighting as they were at fucking. He laughed, thinking of Susan’s face when she recognized them. He had his line ready: ‘But my dear – I thought you said that matt black went with everything!’

  Thinking up little teases for a girl – he must be going soft in his old age. But she was worth making an effort for. He liked her. And her impenetrability was the one thing which titillated him these days. He had other girls whom he placed in situations, a pawn in every port, and liked to watch, but afterwards they went all quiet and morose. They got what he thought of as ‘the guilts’, a virus like flu. Catholic girls were the worst for that. They usually ended up taking various sorts of sordid drugs because they ‘couldn’t live with’ themselves. Fair enough. He couldn’t live with them either. But drug-taking women were so messy and unappealing. For one thing, they stopped enjoying the sex, the banquet of flesh he placed before them. Then they had outlived their usefulness.

  Some talked about respect and how he didn’t have any for them. He didn’t. But not because of what they chose to do with their genitalia. He hadn’t respected his wife, and she’d been a virgin. He hadn’t respected Caroline and she, despite her habit of shedding her clothes before cameras, had been a faithful girlfriend whom he had never involved in any of his tableaux. He didn’t respect Sigrid and Sonya, who were by now more or less whores. But the chastity or promiscuity of these women hadn’t come into why he didn’t respect them; he didn’t respect them because they were soft.

  Susan was hard. Beneath the satin abundance of skin and hair, it was like biting on silver foil; you couldn’t get through. He put her into situations which would have curdled the blood of any normal white woman and she didn’t just endure them to please him, as the others did; she took the situation away from him and turned it towards her own pleasure. He had never known that before. It was a challenge. But one day . . . one day she’d break. And that would be the greatest thrill of all. Then, and only then, he’d fuck her. And then he would be free of her.

  Pope turned to Warren. ‘OK, boy?’

  Warren smiled back frankly. ‘I’ve never been to London, sir. Lots of pretty girls, right?’

  ‘The prettiest,’ said Pope with a surge of misplaced patriotism. ‘The finest women in the world. As yours are the finest men.’

  ‘Thank you, boss,’ said Warren, bowing.

  Pope laughed. The boy was being sarcastic; he had spirit, and a sense of humour. Even that hellhole he’d grown up in hadn’t bashed it out of him. Unlike that po-faced ba
stard he’d fathered. Pope thought of his son and frowned. His mother’s son, all right.

  A thought hit him. Wouldn’t it be a great joke – a black joke! – to leave Pope Communications to this illiterate darkie from shanty town when he died? He could just see the look of horror on David’s face, and Maxine’s when they got through the layers of tranquillizers. They’d soon stop their liberal crap then; they’d soon start talking about schvartzes like the bigoted bourgeois German Jews they were at heart. He laughed again, and turned to Warren to share the joke as they reached the bottom of the steps.

  But before he could open his mouth, a shot rang out. And Tobias Pope hit the ground.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Yes, I have this man to thank for my life,’ said Tobias Pope, standing up and reaching across the aisle to slap Warren on the back yet again.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I know who to blame,’ said Susan moodily. He hadn’t told her where they were going, and she was mildly annoyed.

  ‘He’d pushed me down and blown Montes’s head off before you could say Wetback,’ went on Pope admiringly.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Always aim to please, miss.’ Warren twinkled at her.

  ‘What did this man Montes have against you anyway, Mr Pope?’ She wondered if he’d tell her the truth.

  He shrugged. ‘The outraged papa bit: very big in Lat Am. Some silly girl I asked to a couple of parties – she got a liking for cocaine and fell in with a bad crowd. Bought the building in some gang war crossfire. They bring it on themselves, these girls, they really do. Drugs. Messiness. Silliness.’

  ‘I saw Caroline last week.’

  ‘Oh yes? And is her career as a screen siren progressing apace?’

  ‘That’s hardly likely, now she’s thirty.’

  ‘No, Susan. That’s hardly likely now she’s a drug addict. Which I certainly did not encourage her to become. On the contrary.’

  Susan looked out of the window. ‘I don’t think it was very conducive to staying off drugs, just waiting around a flat for your boyfriend to visit you once a month.’