‘Maxine, I’ve got to talk to you!’ he shouted urgently. He could see things slipping away before his eyes.
‘Just go and get a lousy whore to do those dirty things, you cheap bastard!’ she shrilled, Brooklyn triumphant. ‘I ain’t playing! Get a whore to do it!’
He slumped against the door defeatedly. ‘But it’s no fun that way,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘Am I evil?’ Susan Street asked Tobias Pope blankly as the car slunk from EC4 to SW1.
He looked at her pure, perverse profile and laughed softly. ‘Did he say that? He didn’t mean it. He’s just jealous. It does terrible things to people.’
‘Am I, though?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t know, Susan. Maybe I’m not the best judge. I can tell you this – you remind me of me. Does that answer your question?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Why? Don’t you think I’m evil?’
‘No,’ she said, surprised. ‘No, I don’t.’
In the lift at Lowndes Square she asked him, ‘What’s going on? I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you for another month.’ He noticed that she had the dazed, distracted air that survivors walking away from car crashes often have.
‘I have to tell you something,’ he said. And he thought he could feel his heart almost burst inside him, just like in trashy books. They went into the flat and he locked the door.
‘I came to London, and I brought you here, to tell you I love you,’ said Tobias Pope. ‘Go into the bedroom and get undressed.’
‘I’ve always thought that sex spoils a relationship,’ she said weakly.
‘That’s funny, I’ve always thought that a relationship spoils sex. Get to it.’
Stunned, she walked into the bedroom. He followed her. Out of her Alalïa, her tights, her heels. She got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
‘I have to tell you I love you, and I want to marry you,’ he said. He left the room, and when he returned he was wearing silk pyjamas beneath an old, worn dressing-gown, and carrying a white cup.
She stared solemnly at him over the bedclothes as he sat down beside her; Miss Muffet and the spider.
He laughed. ‘Don’t look so scared, I certainly don’t intend to sleep with you before I marry you. Not now. Not now I respect you. Drink this, it will help you sleep. I just want to tell you a story.’
‘What.’ It wasn’t even a question.
He laughed again. His new laughter made his face look very young, something which only served to accentuate how old he looked in repose. How old he was. ‘An old, old story. Stop me if you’ve heard it. Two stories in one – romance and redemption. Boy meets girl and finds faith – if you can call a man of fifty-five a boy or a complete monster a girl, which I doubt. But I digress. Semantics are not romantic.’ He stood up and began to pace the room.
‘When I met you, I had neither romance nor redemption on my mind. What I had in mind was sport. I’ve found sport in you, but I’ve found more; I’ve found love, and faith in the human spirit. To see your strength, and your faith in yourself, and your utter lack of self-loathing no matter how squalid the situation you find yourself in – for me, it’s been an education.’
‘You make it sound like a sexual Jeux Sans Frontières.’ She shivered with memory.
‘Well, I didn’t think they made people like you any more – a rebel without a doubt. Not women, not in the West. Not now it’s closing time.’ He sat down and searched for her hand under the covers. ‘I don’t just want you for my editor, I want you for my wife. What do you think?’
‘I think you’re crazy,’ she said slowly. But she didn’t really know any more. All she could see was the winning tape, turned to liquid gold in the sunlight of her success; all she could feel was it breaking, like a perfect, meritocratic, wave across her body.
Again he laughed. ‘No you don’t. You think I’m fascinating. Which I am. And worse, much worse, you care for me. As I care for you. Will you marry me?’
‘I’m going to marry your son,’ she said, looking into his eyes.
He laughed sadly, shaking his head. ‘No you’re not. Not because I’m going to stop you, but because your will to survive and thrive will. That route’s not for you; you know as well as I do that romantic love is always either a living death – those are the ones they call happy marriages – or a battle to the death – they’re the ones that end in divorce. Boy meets girl, and their hormones act as a sort of magic carpet carrying them up, up and away to all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you!’ He blew a loud raspberry and stuck out his tongue. ‘And then one day the young ones wake up with a crash landing and they’re yelling at each other about whose turn it is to put the garbage out. Susan, young love is a lemming: it’s born to die. And you’re left with that resentful boredom you last experienced as a teenager living en famille; why don’t you leave me alone, why don’t you understand me, why don’t you die? Until one day you just walk away, and as you sit on the bus finding your fare, you count your loose change and find that you’ve spent ten whole years of your life. The only difference is that this time you did it voluntarily – and that as a teenager, you could afford to kill time. But now, when you look in the mirror, you see time’s been killing you. You see that you’re not so unimpeachably young any more; too much bullshit and too many bullshots have left stretch marks on your mind and body.’
‘I am beside myself with fear,’ she said sarcastically.
‘You will be, when you walk out on my son and you’re not SUSAN STREET in upper case any more; when you’re not upwardly nubile, just another divorced broad living on begged alimony, borrowed time and stolen kisses. Susan, you’re too good for that. You don’t want that.’
‘I want your son,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Have him. On the side, as they say. Who’s stopping you? God knows, I’m a New Man . . .’
She hooted. And then she threw her arms around his neck. Like an American Fifties B-film, he was so bad he was good. How could she let him get away just for a pretty face and a big cock when he was the only person she had ever met who didn’t make her feel like a Martian? Her head on his shoulder felt like home. She squeezed him tight.
‘I’ll make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice,’ he promised.
‘Who’s she? Your new girlfriend?’
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked patiently.
‘I think that might be a distinct possibility.’ She laughed.
‘Well, sleep on it.’ He patted the pillows. ‘Drink your milk. And let me tell you a bedtime story.’
She smiled at him indulgently. He was beaming like a boy.
‘Let me tell you about your next task. The next task is the last, isn’t that so? And then you get your heart’s desire. I want to tell you now what the last task is so that you may prepare yourself for it. And thus relish it all the more.’
Her smile faded. Her muscles tensed. She watched him as he stood up and began to pace the room once more. The long mirrors scattered around the room threw him back at her wherever she looked, this old man with his new love. He was everywhere. He was everything. Right now, nothing existed beyond this room. She felt reality, struggle, even ambition slip away. His words sounded like a mantra.
‘For our last task, we’re going to Haiti. The beautiful island of Haiti, Susan – it’s received a lot of bad publicity over the last few years, most undeserved. Home of AIDS, my foot! – why everyone knows that San Francisco is the home of AIDS. OK, so a rich American fag can buy a native there for the price of a piña colada – but so what? It’s a free country. And in a free country, everything has its price. Who are we to sit in judgement? Live and let live. They’re a charming people, too; so obliging. Make the Thais look like iceboxes. I, my personal self, like to watch the goings on at one particular house of joy where the girls and boys drink a punch whose base ingredient is seminal fluid – I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, darling. I’m told it’s rather like a m
argarita. Only thicker.’ He laughed reassuringly. ‘And the hangover’s worse.’ He looked at her, his eyes gleaming. And he started to laugh again.
She lay under the thick covers in the warm flat, frozen from head to toe. She felt as if she were lying in her own grave. This, for him, was the final twisted kick: to use her as gun and target both, to play Russian roulette with the girl he loved – and she knew now that he really did – which made it much more exciting, a game played for much higher stakes than if she had been some faceless pro.
She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t do it. But to have come all this way . . . done all those things . . . to have lost David . . . dear God, why had she ever trusted this man? He was evil; at last she understood the meaning of the word.
But too late.
A single, solitary tear ran down her face.
Tobias Pope stopped laughing. He leaned towards her with the rapture of a scientist discovering DNA and said, ‘My God.’ His voice was the voice of a man in the heat of the act of worship as he said, ‘My God. You’re crying, Susan. You’re really crying.’
She began to bawl, loudly and unbeautifully. He watched her, mesmerized. Through the fluid fog she saw him fumble with the belt of his dressing-gown and pull at his pyjamas. And then she felt him climb on to the bed.
‘I’ve broken you. I’ve broken you!’ he cried in a voice full of reverence, regret and agonizing excitement. ‘I’VE BROKEN YOU!’
She felt how hard he was; how hard, big and rich he was. He was all American, all man and all men, and that made her suddenly and maddeningly aware of how soft she was – how soft, European and powerless. It wasn’t fair, and it stirred something inside her; some swampy instinct of aggression and survival.
His face was already red with excitement, and as he fumbled at her opening she said, ‘Your money. The tax. They’re going to take the tax. They’re going to take your money.’
He stared at her, stopping. Then he clutched her by the shoulders and yelled into her face, as though she were an old trusted family physician who had just told him he had an incurable disease and six months to live, ‘IS THIS TRUE, GODDAMNIT?’
‘Yes!’ she screamed.
With that the will left him. And he gasped, stiffened and was still.
She pushed him off, got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. And she said, ‘My name is Susan Street, and I am the youngest-ever female newspaper editor in the world.’
The man on the bed jerked one more time, as if in agreement.
And then, for good measure, he jerked again. Because the late Tobias X. Pope had always done everything to excess.
The police came.
TWENTY
In the morning, when she woke up, she realized that she actually probably wasn’t the youngest-ever female newspaper editor in the world at all.
Her mixed blessing of a benefactor was dead, his son and heir hated her and Pope Communications was due to go up in moral and fiscal flames the minute the IRS lighted the touch paper.
And her career with it. And as everyone knew, there were no second acts in modern careers.
From that moment she became immobilized by grief, lying in bed neither sleeping nor really awake. Occasionally she would go to the bathroom and pass or drink some water. When Matthew spoke to her, she just looked at him.
He started to sleep on the sofa.
The only game in town was over, and she’d lost. She’d lost.
So now there was really no point in going on with anything.
On the sixth day she want into the office at lunchtime to clear out her desk and give in her notice. But as she passed David Weiss’s office on the way to hers, automatically looking in, she saw that his door was open and he was at his desk. She stood there, looking at his head bent over some papers.
He looked up and stood up. ‘Oh. It’s you. I was wondering when you’d have the nerve to show your face. You’d better come in.’
‘OK,’ she said dully. She looked lousy, in an old raincoat and with nothing on her face but twenty-seven years of thwarted ambition. She didn’t care. She went in and shut the door behind her.
He stood looking out of the window, his back to her. ‘Susan.’
‘Yes, David.’ She sat down.
‘Susan, you may be aware that my father is dead.’
‘Yes, David. I know, David.’
‘Of a heart attack. Killed in the throes of what is fancifully known as love-making with a young English slut and alleged employee.’
‘It wasn’t the throes,’ she muttered.
‘What?’
‘I said IT WASN’T THE THROES. He never even got it in. And I mean never.’
‘So you keep saying. Anyway, while you and my father were so industriously engaged working yourselves to death, I’ve been busy doing humdrum things like saving Pope Communications from the tender mercies of the Supreme Court. Just in case you were interested.’
‘WHAT?’
‘I did what I said I’d do. It’s business as usual. Well, almost as usual.’
‘But HOW?’
‘Not without a good deal of crawling, capital and courage, I can tell you. It hasn’t been cheap, in any sense. But we won’t be hearing from the fab four again.’
‘How did you do it?’
He came around and sat on the desk. ‘For a start, some time late next year will see the launch of Pope Communications’ mass-market Sunday paper, to be called – don’t retch – the Sunday Sauce. Don’t make that face. And to be edited by Bryan O’Brien, who can run sex scandals and serial-murder centre-spreads to his heart’s content. The Sauce will effectively look after the downmarket end of sales, leaving the Best free to pursue its original ideals. The wedding will also take place next year of Bryan O’Brien and Lady Caroline Malaise; the happy couple will honeymoon at the Sunny von Bulow Clinic, where Lady C and her monkey will attempt a surgical separation.’
‘And Joe Moorsom?’
‘Ah. When not evangelizing on the healing power of nudity, the Sunday Sauce will be editorializing on the healing power of unity that only a Labour government can bring to this great nation of yours. Mr Moorsom will also have his own weekly column, from which not one word may be expurgated.’
‘A left-wing Sun? But that’s blackmail!’
He shrugged. ‘A good majority of the British press has been in the pocket of the Conservatives ever since its inception. Just think of this as redressing the balance a little.’
‘And Ingrid?’
‘Here’s the bit you’re not going to like. It’s now almost certain that we’ll get our cable franchise. Miss Ingrid Irving will join Pope Communications as Controller of PTV. A post she specifically asked for. Because, and I quote, “Everyone knows newspapers are finished now – it’s cable that counts.” ’ He shuddered. ‘I only hope her judgement as Controller will prove a little more sound than her judgement per se.’
‘She’s getting the cable?’ Susan was horrified.
‘She’s not the only one. As a sweetener to the Honourable Mr Moorsom, PTV will be a little different from the wall-to-wall, round-the-clock, patriotic nude female mudwrestling my father had in mind. It will have a heavy news and current affairs bias.’ He walked to a video machine in the corner of the room and switched it on. ‘With one exception. Miss Irving’s first signing.’
The screen flickered for an instant before a silky fringe and sulky pout materialized. Then she was staring at the face of Rupert Grey; which was standing up very well, considering the number of times it had been sat on.
‘His screen test,’ said David with a smile.
‘Good evening. Rupert Grey reporting. I am pleased to preview my forthcoming new show for PTV, Repent with Rupee.’
Susan turned to David with a look of disbelief; he nodded, grimly.
‘Repent With Rupee will combine the best of the talk show with the religious broadcasting currently so popular in the USA. Each week I will be talking to a celebrity who had the good fortune to find G
od and renounce their wicked ways; sins as diverse as drug abuse, embezzlement and—’ Here a barely audible sigh escaped Rupert’s raspberry lips. ‘—oral sex. Nevertheless, Repent With Rupee will sidestep tacky voyeurism by virtue of its immaculate presentation, and will stand as a tasteful, poignant yet positive document of our time. God bless you. Byeee!’ The screen went blank.
‘This is a joke, right?’ she pleaded.
David shook his head. ‘Joe Moorsom moves in mysterious ways, his pound of flesh to get.’
‘Is there any more?’
‘One more thing. Pope Communications will take immediate steps to withdraw from South Africa. All in all, we are about to embark on a major revamp and revitalization programme which will make certain that we take a leading role in the new caring capitalism crusade of the Nineties.’
‘What’s black and white and Green all over,’ she muttered.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ she said sullenly. ‘Well. Aren’t you clever? You won’t be needing me now.’
‘That’s right.’ He went back to the window. ‘I suppose I don’t need to tell you how shamefully unprofessional your conduct has been ever since Charles Anstey died. And before, if office gossip and the coroner’s office are to be believed.’
‘Yes, David.’ The crunch had come and she was feeling faint. She put her head between her knees in order to revive herself.
He turned around. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Susan?’
‘Trying to revive myself.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were attempting autolingus. You realize that you are now widely and indelibly regarded as a complete nymphomaniac, I hope?’
‘Indelibly.’
‘So I’m giving you ten minutes to clear out your desk.’
She gaped at him stupidly. Tears came to her eyes – this was becoming a habit. ‘Yes, David.’ She got wearily to her feet.
‘And another ten minutes to transfer the contents – G-Spot vibrator, Chinese love balls and piña colada-flavoured condoms and all – into the editor’s desk.’
Ambition Page 26
