Holly Lester

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘Kimmo? I’ve heard of her,’ he said carefully.

  ‘You’ll hear more. Her husband owns the largest Liechtenstein Bank. But he lives in London and has an estate in Scotland – it’s meant to be bigger than Liechtenstein itself. He’s a Finn, probably the world’s single richest Finn. Ironically, he was a major Thatcher supporter; Sally is equally keen on Labour. Next to Saatchi, she probably has the largest collection of trendy second-rate contemporary art in this country.’

  ‘And who is Hamish Ferguson?’

  ‘He’ll be Lester’s Press Secretary. Used to be the Labour correspondent for the FT. The single most confident man I’ve ever met. With the exception of Alan Trachtenberg, that is. Why?’

  ‘The press keep mentioning him. Do you come across him?’

  ‘As little as possible. But the Arts are a big part of the Manifesto, and I can predict exactly what’s going to happen.’ He began to speak in a PR man’s staccato: ‘There will be a major administrative reshuffle – the Arts Council will be completely reconstituted with predictable howls from the bureaucrats displaced. But nothing will really change. After twelve months of penny-pinching by the Chancellor, suddenly he will announce a major programme of spending, all supposedly based on the new economies Labour has discovered in the flatulent waistline they’ve inherited from the Tories. The arts will be among the smaller recipients of largesse, but the mere fact that spending seems to be up will win the government disproportionate plaudits from the twats who think Covent Garden is the be all and end all of cultural life. People like Matthew King will be chucked out of government – they’re old Labour and really do care whether the opera makes it more than once every ten years to Doncaster. Where the money will go is into the London One Thousand project.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘London One Thousand. The millennium of our fair city. Opportunity for a Labour government to build an enormous national project of purely symbolic value that simply can’t go wrong.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Nobody knows for sure. Something like the Great Exhibition of 1851. Or the New York World’s Fair of, what was it, 1961? Something along those lines.’

  ‘But why on earth is that important? Who cares about that?’

  ‘Alan Trachtenberg, because it has two advantages: it seems to make financial sense, since it should bring even more tourists to London (just what we all want, heh?); and it will let him make its mark as his baby – something which beefing up the Poetry Society or helping the RSC would never let him do. You don’t get remembered for keeping a pre-existing organisation alive, do you, not when you can create something yourself from scratch.’

  ‘Are you going to write that?’

  McBain shrugged and drank more Chablis. ‘Eventually. Labour’s going to win, so there will be plenty of time. I have to say, though, that this is the fourth Election I’ve covered and I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the Tories can’t seem to get started.’

  ‘Labour’s running a good campaign,’ Billings said, a little surprised to hear himself coming to its defence.

  ‘Sure, in a purely negative way. I admit that Harry Lester is polished, smooth, attractive, almost folksy – perfect for a new Prime Minister sweeping aside twenty years of Tory rule. But he’s also’ – here McBain paused dramatically – ‘not that bright. He’s like a walking version of Prospect Magazine. Serious, yes, and intellectually pretentious, which goes a long way into making people think you know what you’re talking about. But he doesn’t, really; any time the going gets tough, he hides behind his own hard men, or wraps himself in the Church. He’s never personally fired anybody in his life; never personally argued through a really contentious issue with opponents who know their own minds. There weren’t any Militant Tendency in his constituency, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Simply that in this campaign you’re not going to see anything of Harry Lester other than pre-planned carefully orchestrated appearances.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem particularly suspicious to me. Whatever you think of Harry Lester, Labour’s got nowhere to go but down in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t risk anything if I didn’t have to.’

  ‘Something smells.’

  Billings sniffed. ‘That’s just the grill – don’t worry, nothing’s on fire.’

  McBain looked exasperated. ‘Something smells in the campaign. Not here, you cretin. Every time the Tories make the slightest sign of getting out of the starting blocks, something happens and they get set back again. Think about it.’

  ‘Labour’s good at counterpunching, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think so. There’s more to it than that. Yes, yes, I know about their database, and the high tech set-up at Millbank, and you don’t have to tell me how cross they get about even the mildest criticism. But that still doesn’t explain how these stories keep coming out at precisely the worst moment for the Conservatives.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Don’t be so aggressive,’ McBain admonished him. ‘Since when were you ever interested in politics anyway? Don’t tell me that some rumpy-pumpy has got you ready to join the Young Socialists.’

  Billings bristled, but his irritation soon subsided as McBain went on. ‘Something rum, as you public school boys like to say, is going on. And others think so, too. Speaking of Sally Kimmo, last night I was at a Rauschenberg opening at the Hayward and got talking to her. She was smashed; she must have drunk a bottle of white wine just in the time I was talking to her. When I said something to her about how the Conservatives kept shooting themselves in the foot, she looked at me in a funny way and said, “Well, Alan does know what he’s doing.”’

  ‘So? Maybe he does.’

  ‘That’s not how she said it. It’s as if she meant Alan were orchestrating the news about the Tories. I know, I know,’ he said, ‘you think I’m sounding like Oliver Stone or something. But I tell you, something’s definitely not kosher. Mark my words. I don’t know what, and I don’t know how, but…’

  ‘You mean to find out?’

  It was McBain’s turn to look annoyed. ‘Yes, though I have to be careful; I have got a family to feed.’ He waved one hand airily, and said, ‘Lunch with an old mate who has a serendipitous connection with the current state of affairs is one thing. Actually putting one’s neck on the line is another.’

  Which would have ended the discussion on that theme, if a woman, dressed in a smart lime green suit and white shoes, looking slightly the worse for wear, had not weaved towards their table, seemingly on the way to the loo until she stopped with a jerk before them, placed both hands on the their table as if to steady herself, leant down, and staring right at McBain said, ‘I think you’re just wonderful.’

  McBain laughed out loud, while Billings looked down at his plate of rump steak and frites. In New York this had never been a problem, since no one in New York saw what McBain wrote, but here there was the occasional public importuning – usually admiring, though there had once been an harangue from an ageing friend of Anthony Blunt.

  ‘I mean it,’ the woman said. ‘You tell it just like it is.’

  ‘May I introduce my friend James Billings?’ asked McBain. The woman’s eyes slid briefly like a yo-yo across the table then shifted back intensely on McBain again. A man suddenly appeared behind her and clutched her arm. ‘Jemima, you’re bothering these gentlemen.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said McBain affably, while Billings looked at the man, who was large, wore a seersucker suit and Guards tie, and seemed entirely sober. He didn’t reply to McBain, but tightened his grip on the woman’s left arm, lifting it from the table and pulling it hard.

  ‘Ow,’ she announced, then added, ‘you’re hurting me.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Billings, half rising to his feet, feeling at once prissy and chivalrous – in short, a caricature of his class and background.

  McBain stayed sea
ted but showed no such ambiguity. ‘Let go of her arm,’ he declared flatly.

  ‘I should stay out of this if I were you, shorty,’ said the seersucker man.

  McBain gave a shallow laugh, which Billings recognized as a danger signal. There had been a large obstreperous Australian reporter in Costello’s Bar in Manhattan who had made a mistake similar to that which this man seemed to be intent on making. Now McBain simply said, ‘If you don’t let go of her arm in the next three seconds, you’ll find out just how tall I am.’ He beamed up at the man, almost hopefully.

  Seersucker ignored this, and taking the woman’s arm back even further, suddenly twisted it behind her back. She jerked upwards, then yelped like a puppy touching an electric cattle fence. By the time Billings had finished standing up, McBain was also on his feet, but not similarly remonstrating. Instead he moved his left arm vaguely forward as if to slap the man’s face, then suddenly shot his right hand out and grabbed the man by the balls. McBain’s left hand then quickly descended, grabbed Seersucker’s belt and hoiked upwards, so that McBain’s hands made a gruesome pas de deux on the man’s private parts.

  It was Seersucker’s turn to yelp. Freed by McBain’s manoeuvre, the lady stepped back astonished, then rushed away towards the front of the restaurant, just as McBain demanded, ‘Apologize to the lady.’

  In a voice out of a Jerry Lewis film, the man declared, ‘I apologize,’ and McBain’s hold relaxed.

  Unsurprisingly, the maitre d’ appeared, and as the man in the seersucker suit limped away, for a moment Billings thought they would be asked to leave. ‘Is anything the matter, sir?’ This elicited a grin from McBain and a shake of his head. Although coffee seemed to Billings highly unnecessary at this point, McBain insisted on seeing through the meal.

  As they left the restaurant McBain apologized for his show of temper. ‘Jackie would be furious. She says I keep acting like I’m still in New York.’

  ‘The Gorbals more likely.’ Billings sighed. ‘London’s changed so much. I find it very odd.’

  ‘You can’t go home again?’

  ‘Something like that.’ A beautiful woman passed them, elegantly dressed in a short black skirt and simple cream blouse. As they both glanced at her, Billings noticed a large single silver hoop pushed in and out of her nostril. He was tempted to tap her on the shoulder and say politely, ‘Excuse me miss, but you seem to have a misplaced earring in your nose’. Instead he sighed again and shook his head, gesturing at the receding figure of the woman. ‘In New York that wouldn’t surprise me. New York’s supposed to be a freak show. But London’s not.’

  McBain laughed. ‘Poor Billings. You decided to come home again, only to find home isn’t here anymore.’

  Chapter 10

  Three days later, he was at the Cedar of Lebanon when Tara, sitting next to him reading Private Eye, suddenly said, ‘What has McBain been up to? I thought he was happily married.’

  ‘He is. Why, what’s happened?’

  She handed him the magazine, where he read the following:

  Fastidious Daisy Carrera, art critic and taste arbiter, would be ashamed of the reported cavorting of her rough and ready creator, former politics hack William McBain. Overindulging at lunch in the West End, the columnist took a fancy to one Sarah Porrington, a young PR consultant. Rebuffed, McBain wouldn’t take no for an answer and when Porrington’s companion, ad exec Sam Tibbons, intervened, McBain responded less amorously, this time with a Glasgow kiss.

  ‘What’s a Glasgow kiss?’ asked Tara.

  ‘When you head butt someone. You know,’ he added, ‘like on television.’ He gave an extravagant demonstration with his own forehead.

  Tara grimaced. ‘It sounds very unpleasant.’

  ‘And entirely untrue.’ He explained the events at lunch.

  Tara listened, then nodded. ‘I thought it didn’t sound like McBain.’

  ‘Yet you initially believed the story.’ As would anyone, contrary to the popular myth perpetuated by melodramatic novels and films – that a man falsely accused will always find his true friends by those who stick by him. All balls, thought Billings the conservative. Friends might or might not stick by you out of friendship, but they would happily believe the worst of you – or anyone for that matter. And in this case, the thousands of readers who didn’t know McBain would naturally believe what they read.

  He was not surprised therefore to discover that McBain was very upset about the item, though for slightly different reasons. ‘Jackie is furious,’ he told Billings over the phone. ‘I can’t say the Editor’s very happy either, though he’s crosser about my cover being blown than my supposed behaviour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that – everyone seems to know you’re Daisy Carrera anyway. But who were those people in the restaurant? And why are they telling these lies to Private Eye?’

  ‘I don’t know. But something smells.’

  ‘You said that the other day.’

  ‘That’s no coincidence. I’m having Mr Tibbons checked out – I have a hunch there will be some connection to some of your new-found friends. But try explaining that to Jackie.’

  ‘I’d be happy to tell her what really happened.’

  ‘She’d just assume I put you up to it. She’s a great believer in where there’s smoke there’s fire.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I know, I’m the one she learned it from. Do I regret it.’

  Billings was not a believer in conspiracies, had never thought that Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent, or that a one-armed Peruvian had also fired on JFK from behind the Grassy Knoll. He was entirely at ease with the cock-up theory of history, happy to discern coincidence rather than conspiracy, chaos rather than an unexposed Master Plan.

  So although the petty mysteries of the last few weeks had been unsettling, he had not grown excessively agitated. No impersonal agency was behind the odd events – his tampered post, the ‘missing’ Burgess, the waiting van outside his flat – but instead some screwball individual or two, or a haphazard assortment of people not linked in their actions by anything but nearness in time.

  Which made it odd that it was McBain’s little difficulty which really shook him, and made him feel for the first time threatened. If McBain’s highly peripheral threat to the Labour Party could result in, first, an unseemly fracas, and second, real damage to his personal and professional life, then what would his own more central role provoke in response? His was no walk-on part, he now realized, feeling like a spear carrier in an RSC production who discovers halfway through the second act that after the interval he will be playing Hamlet.

  At the weekend he stayed home, having refused an invitation to the Anderson-Russells’ largish country house in Kent. A-R, as he was known to friends, was a Tory of patrician pretension, and since Billings found his own lukewarm political allegiance to the Tories increasingly compromised, he decided to stay away.

  He worked on his Nash article on Saturday afternoon, ate a thin steak with oven chips, drank half a bottle of cheap claret, and was watching Kind Hearts and Coronets on the box when, as midnight approached, an advertisement appeared on the screen.

  ‘Harry Lester may be Britain’s next Prime Minister, and Holly Lester the new Prime Minister’s wife. A happy couple, doting on their only child. But a dark secret lies at the heart of the Lesters’ happiness. Find out what it is in tomorrow’s News of the World.’

  The cover of the offending issue flashed on screen – a picture of Holly and Harry together, another photo of a third man, blocks of type which Billings scanned fleetingly, seeing HOLLY’S SECRET before they disappeared.

  Billings thought his heart would explode from sudden pounding. His curiosity had turned to sudden fear. So his relationship with Holly had been unearthed. But how, and by whom? McBain didn’t know anything for certain, and Billings trusted him; Tara could have nothing but suspicions; Trachtenberg, according to Holly, wasn’t a problem since the last thing he would want to do, regardless of his feelings about t
heir goings-on, would be to harm Labour’s chances.

  So who else knew? Exposure imminent, he felt especially alone with Holly out of touch. What would his parents think? He almost laughed at this reaction, for he could see his father’s disapproval as he read the news on the salacious third page of the Daily Telegraph; his mother, a true Poujadist, would see her son on page one of the Daily Mail. Both papers would be read on the Southern Coast of Spain, days after their first publication in London – at least he would have time to warn them.

  And closer to home? His heart fell as he thought of the hurt the news would cause Marla. And what would it do to his business? James Billings, staid purveyor of traditional landscape watercolours and – what? cad? ladies’ man? He would draw many more visitors to his gallery, but they’d all be coming in to see him. All in all, the prospect of exposure filled him with a deep, nauseating fear.

  There was nothing to do, he realized, so he went to bed, reading a much-loved Dorothy Sayers – The Nine Tailors – like a child retreating to a favourite teddy bear. He only fell asleep as the early springtime light began to filter through his bedroom. Rising at nine, he made coffee and took it into the sitting room where he turned on the television to see what news there was of his affair with Holly Lester.

  To his astonishment he was greeted by the sight of a smiling Holly, laughing across a coffee table with David Frost.

  ‘You’re pleased, then, with how the Election’s progressing? Confident even?’

  ‘Confident, but not overconfident. And very hopeful. We feel we’re getting our message across.’

  Frost leaned forward and picked up one of the newspapers from the low table. There was no appreciable reaction from Holly, and Billings admired her aplomb. ‘Turning to something more personal now,’ said Frost, ‘the News of the World—’

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ Holly interjected, then laughed. Billings was dumbfounded.

  ‘It can’t be pleasant for you, this kind of delving into your personal life.’