‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. Most people say Clawdier.’
‘She says Cloudier. I need to talk to you about her. Have you met her? She’s around somewhere. Charming girl. She wants to work in television: needs someone to show her the ropes.’
‘Why don’t you hire a PA who knows them?’ I asked. Before the words left my mouth I’d realized I shouldn’t have asked: the drinks were slowing me down. Since his second wife left him, he’d taken up with girls in their late teens and early twenties, way above his sexual touch. He’s in his early fifties, thin and anxious-looking, with wispy pale hair that he compulsively combs over an even paler scalp. He peers through beautifully designed Armani spectacles that he refers to as his ‘bird-pullers’. They don’t work. To get a girl to endure his company, he has to bribe them with the prospect of a glittering future in television. Even with this lure, what with education for women, the equal opportunities legislation, and natural female common sense, he doesn’t get many takers. When he does, they’re preselected for IQs in the low eighties and self-deception ratings somewhere in the top .0001 percentile of the population.
‘Right,’ I said meaninglessly. Claudia would be lucky if I showed her to the lavatory. No way would I share any of my hard-earned acquaintanceship with television ropes. ‘How’s our doco going? When do you shoot?’
‘Not till the end of August. Some trouble with the money men.’
‘Tell me about trouble with money men,’ I said. ‘Hardly anyone’s hiring, and no one’s paying. Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’ve got money up-front for my current project,’ he said smugly. ‘Japanese money.’
Now I was interested. ‘What’s it about?’
‘Education. They want to find out what’s wrong with their education system.’
‘I thought the Japanese education system worked wonderfully well for the ninety-nine per cent who didn’t kill themselves.’
‘They’re worried about the one per cent who do. They’re doing a worldwide survey on successful headmasters and headmistresses. I’m handling the European end. Working title, Headache.’
Typical Alan working title: uninformative yet unfunny. But, like a blaze of light, I saw how I could do Plummer’s job, get into Rissington Abbey, and find out about Olivier without letting anyone know what I was after. I could use Alan’s doco as a cover.
He’d had a few drinks. I fetched him another and twisted his arm. After a while he agreed I could give his sacred name to Mr Head at Rissington Abbey, at a price. I’d have to work, free, for two days when he started shooting the menopause doco in August. ‘I’m not sure Claudia can handle it alone.’
That was all I needed, two free days teaching an airhead too thick to pronounce her own name. I’d have to find a way to add it to Plummer’s bill.
Then Barty appeared at my side. ‘Hello, Alan.’
Barty and Alan are both independent producers, but there the resemblance ends. Alan is a parasite. Show him power and he’ll flatter it, call its taxis, and clear up the mess on its carpet. Barty is instinctively subversive. Alan’s afraid of Barty, but he always keeps in with people. If he’d been an independent producer in Nazi Germany, he’d never have turned up at Eagle’s Nest without a freshly baked Black Forest gateau. ‘Good evening, Barty,’ he said. ‘Long time no see. What’ve you been up to? Is it true what I’ve been hearing? Can we lunch?’
‘Fine,’ said Barty. ‘Great. I’ll have my secretary call you, but right now I want to talk to Alex.’ He gripped my arm and edged me away.
‘Why are you talking American?’ I said.
‘That’s not American, that’s media insincere. I thought you had a good ear . . . Where can we go?’
‘My bedroom?’
We pushed our way through the party and up the stairs, through the miasma of Poison which still hung about the staircase. There was somebody in my bedroom, on the bed. Two somebodies. We backed out of the room and sat on the stairs.
‘Party’s going well,’ said Barty.
‘Mmm. Thank God. I hate parties.’
‘You’re looking very attractive.’
‘Thank you. The outfit’s a present from Polly.’
‘It’s your face and body.’
‘Don’t make a move on me now, Barty, please.’
‘I wasn’t going to . . . I have a present for you.’ He handed me a home-made gold paper envelope bunchily folded and held together with what looked like half a roll of Sellotape, so I knew he’d done it himself. (He’s selectively clumsy. He can repair camera equipment and edit film with the accuracy of a neurosurgeon, but he can’t pack two shirts into an overnight case.) Inside the gold paper envelope, a membership card. For the London Library.
‘Why bother?’ I said. I should of course have said thank you and told him honestly how delighted I was, but I’m always graceless when I’m moved.
‘Because you like books. Because it’s a good library. Because I knew you’d never spend your own money on the subscription,’ he said. ‘Because I hoped it would please you.’
It was one of the few presents I’d ever had which showed some understanding of me. Polly, a persistent present-giver, always tries, but she gives me what she thinks I need (perfume; clothes; earrings). In my interminable childhood, passed from hand to hand like the parcel that no one wants to open, none of my foster-parents had ever known me well enough to choose a successful present: my mother had often been hard put to remember who I was.
So I was moved almost to tears. He saw, and knowing I didn’t want him to see, pretended not to and chattered on. ‘I stopped recognizing my own birthdays when I turned forty . . .’
I knew he deserved more than a flippant thank you. Something genuine, exchanged for a genuine gift. I gave him my best effort and shared my thoughts.‘It’s probably the second happiest moment of my life,’ I said.
He took it seriously: he’s good at tone. ‘What was the first?’
‘When I opened my first payslip and knew I’d escaped the Social Services. Finally, I was earning my living. I could rent my own room and pay for it. Eventually, I knew, I’d buy my own flat.’
Silence. I looked at Barty, he looked back. He has dark blue eyes with an even darker rim, and very thick black eyelashes. His eyes were smiling though his face wasn’t. ‘Look, Alex . . .’ he began, rather awkwardly. Then the bedroom door opened and a red-haired youth of about seventeen stuck his head out. ‘Anyone got some Amplex?’ he said urgently.
‘In the top drawer of the dressing-table,’ I said. He disappeared.
‘Who’s that?’ said Barty.
‘I think he’s Polly’s model friend Marcia’s younger brother.’
‘Who’s he with?’
‘Alan’s new aspiring media bunny, Claudia.’
The head appeared again. ‘Got any condoms, mate?’ he said to Barty.
‘Bedside table drawer,’ I said, and he ducked back in.
‘Oh, yes?’ said Barty, widening his eyes at me.
‘Don’t you use them?’ I said, unexpectedly embarrassed. I don’t embarrass easily.
‘Not in your bedroom,’ he said. ‘So far. Unfortunately. What do you suppose his next request will be?’
‘Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is”?’
‘Did he look like a virgin to you?’
The face appeared again. ‘Don’t have any soft cords, by any chance?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And the bed’s a divan.’
‘Scarves?’ he pursued hopefully.
‘I don’t wear them.’
‘Camera tape any good to you?’ said Barty, producing a roll from his shirt pocket.
‘Mind the wallpaper,’ I said.
‘Sure. Great. Thanks.’
He left us staring at each other ‘Camera tape?’ I said. With Barty, I didn’t have to laugh out loud. Then I remembered. ‘You were going to say something, before he interrupted.’
‘Was I?’ said Barty disingenuously.
‘Yes, you were.’
>
‘Sorry, it’s gone,’ he said.
I didn’t believe him.
It must have been a good party. The last guest went home after three. By then I was exhausted, not from the late night (I don’t need much sleep), but from the strain. Polly had flaked out at midnight and Barty took her home to sleep at his place.
Then he came back. I hadn’t thought he would, but he came straight back and kept going, like a host, until he threw the red-haired youth and Alan’s Claudia out of my bedroom and closed the front door firmly behind them. Then he helped me clear up.
That was when I discovered something else about him: he was the only man I’d ever met who didn’t automatically assume that cleaning lavatories was a woman’s job. I did. I went up to my bathroom, ready equipped with J-cloth, bleach, and rubber gloves, to find him on his hands and knees. ‘Keep out,’ he said, ‘I’ve nearly finished the floor.’
‘What about the toilet bowl?’
‘Done it. Of course. You do the floor last, everyone knows that.’
I inspected his work. It was excellent. ‘I’ll go down to Polly’s bathroom,’ I said.
‘I’ve done it. Bathrooms are the worst things about parties. Always get the worst over first.’
It was half-past four before we’d finished and the place – both places, Polly’s and mine – weren’t perfect but they no longer looked like a battleground. The clearing-up was the bit of the party I most enjoyed. Being with Barty under those circumstances, with something to do, was like working on a project with him. I could relax into his company without feeling awkward, and I liked seeing my flat emerge into being my own again.
We talked about what we were doing, and about the people who’d been there, and argued mildly about whether Alan was third-rate or fourth-rate and how long his current bimbo, Claudia, would last. I fantasized about telling Alan that it seemed she already knew the ropes, or at least the camera tape, and he’d better find another metaphor to apply to her comparative media inexperience.
Eventually we collapsed on my sofa. My feet were murder because I’d been wearing high-heeled shoes all night (Polly’d insisted) and my legs aren’t used to them. I lay down with my feet on Barty’s lap and he massaged them. His fingers rubbed my feet precisely. He was in non-clumsy mode. He’d made me a mug of coffee.
The sensation was delicious. I shut my eyes and enjoyed the touch of his fingers. When I first met him he didn’t appeal to me particularly. He’s not bad looking, but it’s not in the style I like. He’s tall, lanky, with a bony Irish face and thick curly brown hair. I’ve never liked curly hair. I like athletic-looking men, with muscle, straight locky hair, smooth oval faces, and strong white teeth. A down-market taste because the men I like are too muscled to look good in suits. Barty’s body could have been designed to hang a suit on. The only bits that protrude are the bones. Odd, really, because when you see more of his body it’s sinewy, with the long rangy muscles of a thoroughbred horse.
To distract myself, I asked him whether he knew a solicitor called Plummer, because he was the most likely person to have recommended me, I thought. ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘He’s just hired me. My first real job as a PI.’
‘That’s good,’ he said, but he didn’t sound entirely happy. I told him all about it but he still didn’t sound happy. I hoped he wasn’t going to get protective. A protective man I didn’t need, but a quick-witted no-bullshit foot-masseur I did.
My feet were recovering, and my tiredness had disappeared. I had the Olivier investigation to look forward to, and the prospect of Barty. So what if he hadn’t been in touch with me for months? He probably had a reason. I’d gathered from odd remarks that he’d been working in California for some of the time. Perhaps he was affected by West Coast neuromeltdown and was respecting my personal space.
Anyway, I was happy with my feet in his lap. Very happy. I wondered, as I told him about Olivier (I was already beginning to find the name familiar – he was my Olivier) what he really felt about me.
And then he told me his wife had just moved back into his house.
God! What an evening. First Clive, now Barty. It was his ex-wife, actually. Divorced ten years ago. A very beautiful woman. I’d seen photographs but never met her. Now, apparently, her second husband had left her and she was staying with Barty. ‘Just till she gets herself sorted out,’ he said, and ‘I tried to tell you earlier,’ and ‘It’s the least I can do. Really. We go back a long way together.’ I snatched my feet away and tucked them under me. I was shaking. I couldn’t possibly compete with her. They’d been married eight years, for a start, and she must know – everything about him. And a first wife. They sink their teeth in deepest, and when they leave the jugular goes with them.
Suddenly I was very tired again and I threw him out, but then I couldn’t sleep. I imagined his house like a doll’s house, opened. In a guest bedroom, Polly, sobbing or snoring off the Martinis. In another room, Barty. Alone, or with his wife? It didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t matter.
Tuesday, June 2nd
Chapter Four
By six I accepted I wasn’t going to sleep. I put on a tracksuit and trainers and ran a good way. Three miles? Four? I don’t take my fitness for granted any longer. Before my broken leg I’d never ever been ill or injured, and I’d always relied on my body to do what I wanted when I wanted. It may not be tall and elegant but it’s strong and sound and tireless, and now I’m careful to keep it like that. I jogged to Wormwood Scrubs – I don’t like running hard on pavement – and then lapped the playing fields as the sun came up and I could see the scrubby, uneven grass at my feet and the black walls of the prison beyond the athletics track.
Back home, I went to Polly’s fridge and fetched some cold salmon and mayonnaise for breakfast, had a bath, washed my hair, cleaned my teeth, packed a bag for a few nights in the country, and settled down at the kitchen table to read the report of the inquest until it was after nine o’clock and I could get a train to Banbury after the commuter rush died down a bit at Paddington. At some point this morning I’d ring Alan at his office, check on the details of my cover, and make sure he’d told his bimbo assistant that I was now on the strength in case the Rissington school rang back to check. Then I’d ring the school and try to fix an appointment. There was plenty of prowling round the town to do if they wouldn’t see me immediately.
By the end of the inquest transcript I knew more about the circumstances of Olivier’s death. He’d been drunk (blood alcohol .12 – well above the limit for driving). He hadn’t been missed from his room but when his housemaster, Alistair Brown, went down to the indoor pool for a keep-fit early morning swim, he’d found him floating in the pool. By then he’d been dead some time. The pathologist reported injuries to his head consistent with hitting his head on the diving-board, presumably when attempting to dive in, and a time of death between midnight and two o’clock. There were traces of skin and blood on the diving-board, Apparently Olivier was a good diver, the best in the school. The suggestion was that he’d been practising alone, drunk, and it was an accident. There was a diving match against another school coming up the following week.
I had a few questions of my own, some of which the coroner had anticipated. The alcohol? According to the headmaster, of course, it was forbidden, but Olivier had been caught with a bottle of vodka and warned before. Yes, said the headmaster, he was a troubled boy. The staff at Rissington Abbey were doing their best to help him. No, boys were not allowed to swim alone. Never. Senior pupils, with their parents’ permission, were allowed to swim unsupervised in threes, but only at certain times, and never after lights-out, of course. The swimming pool was locked at night.
Why wasn’t he missed from his room? He’d had a room to himself. He’d been there at room-check, ten o’clock, when Alistair Brown had said goodnight to him. Brown gave evidence. Olivier had seemed quite as usual the night before. He’d mentioned the diving match, and that he was working on a n
ew dive for it.
None of the other pupils gave evidence. That was where I needed to be, talking to them. There’d be any amount of rumour but there might also be some fact, and they’d know far more about his actual state of mind than the teachers.
I wondered, riffling through the inquest transcript again, whether any of his family had been there. Whoever was hiring me (the French grandfather?) was very interested in Olivier. Interested enough, perhaps, to have gone to the inquest.
I might get that from the local newspaper coverage. That was my first stop in the country, the office of the local newspaper. I’d get a picture of Olivier that way, and the reporter who’d covered it might have details he didn’t put in the paper and that I could pump him for. He’d certainly have more information about the school than I had.
Local reporters generally come in two types. Rising Young (often female) and Drunken Has-Been (almost always male). Drunken Has-Been is more useful, but either will do. Both of them usually know where the local bodies are buried, if only because the editor’s warned them to keep off.
As I packed the inquest transcript and locked up the flat, I felt guilty about ditching Polly. She’d probably be sleeping in at Barty’s. She had no work to get up for – she was on holiday from her huge firm of city accountants (getting less huge by the day as they weeded out in face of the recession) and in the normal way I’d have gone over to Barty’s place before I left and checked that she was all right. But I didn’t want to see his ex-wife, I didn’t (did I?) want to see him, and I told myself that Polly would be OK. It was only Clive, for Heaven’s sake. She was better off without him.
So I bottled out. I left an encouraging message for her, hesitating at first between ‘Good riddance’ and ‘Poor you, you must be feeling awful’. I compromised on the multi-purpose Irishism ‘I’m sorry for your trouble’. That, at least, was true.
Chapter Five
On the train to Banbury, a nearly empty Inter-City, I had four seats and a table to myself. I opened my expense account with Mr Plummer. I took a new personal finance sheet in my Filofax, headed and dated it, entered the tube fare to Paddington and the open return ticket from Paddington to Banbury, and tried to remember if there was a nice, big, anonymous, chain hotel I could stay at in Banbury. I like big hotels, where nobody cares who you are or where you eat or what you’re doing. Hotels with an electric kettle and packets of instant coffee in the rooms and no guff about ancient traditions of service which usually mean (1) they ask you how you are all the time, (2) if something’s wrong they do sod-all about it, and (3) they disapprove of your clothes.
In At The Deep End Page 3
