by Jemma Harvey
Back at my flat, he came in for coffee. I didn’t offer; he didn’t ask; it just happened. I was moving round the kitchen doing the usual things with a cafetière when I found he was studying me the way he had once before, the time he said: ‘Stand up’; that dispassionate, assessing gaze, as if I was a horse for sale. Yet somehow it wasn’t dispassionate, and I didn’t feel at all like a horse. ‘You have a great body,’ he said. ‘Really great. Don’t diet any more. Leave everything . . . just . . . the way it is.’ His eyes rested a fraction too long on my breasts. I wasn’t wearing anything particularly revealing, but it felt like it. Hastily, I returned to coffee-making.
‘Black, no sugar, isn’t it?’ I said.
It was.
I poured him a drink (in my fantasy, there was whisky in the flat) and he took it from me, standing very close, looking down at me – he’s much taller – in a strange, unsaturnine fashion, his face set, focused, as I had seen it sometimes bent over the manuscript. It was curious how much I’d noticed his expressions when we’d been together, how clearly I could re-create them in my mind. When he accepted the glass his hand touched mine, a touch that made me warm all over, in fancy and in fact.
In the living room we sat down on the sofa, side by side. Mandelson checked Todd out with his customary scornful air; I apologised for his haughty manners and explained the origin of his name. Todd laughed. (That was another expression I’d learned: how the lines in his cheeks deepened and crooked around his mouth.) We talked about writing, and life, and how, like Jake Hatchett, relationships had never worked out for him. ‘Maybe the real problem,’ he said, ‘is that I’ve never found the right woman.’
‘Not even Helen?’ I asked, daringly. It’s easy to be daring in your imagination.
‘Helen and I aren’t great together any more. I fell for her because she was a lawyer – because I admired her high ideals – she represented the route I thought I should have taken, the career I should have had. I always feel I copped out, being a writer.’
‘No you didn’t,’ I objected, passionately. ‘You write wonderful books. You mightn’t have had wonderful court cases. Anyhow, in books they always get the right guy. As I understand it, it doesn’t always happen that way in court.’
He laughed again – I was good at making him laugh – and put down his drink, and then his arm was around me, and he was coming closer, closer, and I couldn’t escape, I didn’t want to, and his mouth reached mine, and we were kissing and kissing, tongues entwined, his free hand exploring my breast. In a tiny corner of my brain I was horrified at myself, because this was a real person, not a boyfriend or casual lover but someone I worked with, and at some future stage I would have to face him (hopefully not for ages), with the guilty memory of this moment lingering in my head. But I couldn’t stop. He was undressing me, slowly, exploring my body with unhurried skill, but behind the restraint I sensed a growing urgency, akin to desperation. And then he was on top of me, and I felt his crotch jutting against me, the hard ridge of his erection straining at his flies. Now was the time to call a halt, before it was too late – but it was already too late.
‘We mustn’t,’ I whispered, in fantasy. ‘We work together. How will I be able to look you in the face after this?’
‘The usual way.’ A hint of saturnity came and went. ‘With your eyes. You have beautiful eyes, did you know?’
(No. Surely he wouldn’t have said that.)
But what he said didn’t matter any more. He was unfastening his jeans, and his cock stood up like a great tower – probably Pisa, from the angle – impossibly massive, the swollen helmet with its cleft like a ripe red fruit, and then he was opening me with his finger, melting me, turning me into cream, until at last I felt him nudging at me for entry, pushing into me, and into me, and into me . . . I came with a violence and intensity that left me gasping and shattered, and emerged from the lost world of my imagination to find I was lying half on, half off the sofa, and the candles were guttering, and Mandy was sitting bolt upright staring at me with chilly disapproval.
‘All right,’ I said when I had got my breath back. (I said it out loud because I do talk to my cat, confident that he will never repeat anything.) ‘It was a mistake, okay? A – a one-night stand.’ Except I was the only person who had stood, unless you counted the massive organ of my fevered invention. ‘At least, when we meet again, he won’t know why I’m cringing with embarrassment. And I can control my blushing, if I practise.’ How do you practise blush control?
It was the heat, that was the trouble. It might have been too darned hot for Marilyn Monroe, but it was never too hot for me. I went into the kitchen and got myself a cooling glass of water, daubing some more between my legs, an agreeable sensation. ‘Anyway,’ I said to myself, ‘ten-to-one you exaggerated the size of his cock. A hundred-to-one. Nobody could possibly be that big.’ I had a dim recollection of hearing something about big noses indicating bigness elsewhere. I visualised Todd’s nose, which was undeniably aquiline. Hmm . . . Or was it big feet?
I resolved not to dwell on the subject, and lay down again on the sofa, unable to sleep, dwelling on it for some time.
The great thing about Lin’s love-life, I reflected when I was back at work, was that it distracted me from my own. I seemed to have drifted further into the realms of fantasy than usual – after all, there was no concrete alternative – with added complications too hideous to contemplate. What I needed was something else to get really worked up about.
‘What is she doing?’ Georgie demanded after we’d heard the news about Ivor moving in. ‘She’s only known him a few minutes. He could be a complete psycho. Talk to her.’
‘Why me?’ I said, startled. ‘You’re much better at talking to people about things. It’s your job.’
‘This isn’t work, it’s personal,’ Georgie said unarguably. ‘You’re tactful. Anyhow, she keeps begging me not to piss on her parade.’
‘Rain,’ I said. ‘Rain on her parade. Look, I know they’re moving a bit fast, but it could work out all right. Just because he’s got dimples—’
‘Never trust a man with dimples,’ Georgie reiterated. ‘Not on his face, at least. She said she wasn’t going to rush into anything, and now look at her.’
‘Even if I did talk to her,’ I said, ‘d’you think she’d listen?’
That one was unanswerable.
‘He was living in this crummy little flat,’ Lin said. ‘Peely wallpaper, and brown stains in the bath. He’d sold his last place and was going to buy somewhere new, but the deal fell through. So he had lots of money in the bank but nowhere to live, and he had to rent something quickly. I was horrified when I saw it, the flat was so scuzzy, and the landlady was like a caricature, all tight lips and curlers. So when he stayed with me on Saturday we talked about it, and decided he should move in with me. He’s given her a month’s notice, but he’s bringing his stuff over this week.’
‘How do the children feel about it?’ I said guardedly.
‘You know how kids are.’ Lin looked faintly discomfited. ‘They’re not good at changes. Ivor’s great with them, though. He says they’ll get used to him in no time. He bought the boys a new computer game, so they’re starting to think he’s okay.’
‘He’s a con man,’ Georgie confided later. ‘Cheap rented flat, pretends he’s got money in the bank, plausible cover story. Pretty soon, he’s going to be after her to invest.’
‘Lin hasn’t anything to invest with,’ I said.
‘Ivor doesn’t know that,’ Georgie argued. ‘He sees her living in a big house in Kensington – celebrity exes – all the trimmings. You can bet he thinks she’s rolling in it.’
‘Then when he finds out the truth, he’ll be off,’ I said. It didn’t cheer us up.
Georgie was propping herself against my desk during this exchange, and straightened up quickly at the approach of Cal. He was showing signs of emerging from the Ice Age, though slowly, coming to talk to me from time to time presumably because I was Georgie�
�s friend. He would ask about her in an offhand sort of way, or tiptoe round the subject without ever quite knocking up against it. Now, seeing her with me, he stopped – then came over. They swapped nonchalant hellos, and tried to pretend they weren’t looking at each other when they were. ‘You’re having girl talk,’ Cal said, perceptively. ‘I’d better leave you to it.’
‘Stick around.’ I was casual. ‘We were discussing Lin.’
‘Is she all right?’
We told him about the situation with Ivor. Perhaps out of perversity, he determined to be tolerant. ‘He wants to shag her every night so of course he’ll move in if he can. It’s natural. It doesn’t mean he’s a bad lot. He’s probably nuts about her. Why not? She’s very pretty.’
‘You’re so predictable,’ Georgie snapped. ‘It’s not that you’ve got a one-track mind: it just doesn’t play any of the other tracks. You may not care about Lin, but we do. We don’t want her to be hurt.’
‘I do care about her,’ Cal protested. ‘I think she’s a lovely person who deserves to be happy. Looks like this bloke’s doing the trick. Why’re you so set on spoiling sport?’
I intervened hastily, trying to calm things down, but after weeks of tension they had finally got into a good quarrel and weren’t about to walk away from it. Maybe, I thought, when they had finished, the last ice-sheet would disintegrate and they could get back on their old terms. I made an excuse which neither noticed, temporarily vacated my desk, and left them to it.
Chapter 9
‘Who knows this damsel, burning bright,’
Quoth Launcelot, ‘like a northern light?’
Quoth Sir Gauwaine: ‘I know her not!’
‘Who quoth you did?’ quoth Launcelot.
‘’Tis Braunighrindas!’ quoth Sir Bors
(Just then returning from the wars).
Then quoth the pure Sir Galahad:
‘She seems, methinks, but lightly clad!
The winds blow somewhat chill today;
Moreover, what would Arthur say?’
GEORGE du MAURIER: A Legend of Camelot
It was the beginning of September, the heatwave had cooled down a few degrees, and the Ultraphone Poetry Awards loomed. (Picture of a man trying to make a phone call with a large dahlia. ‘Why say it with flowers when you can say it with Ultraphone?’) Jerry Beauman’s proofs had materialised in record time – publishers can produce a book very quickly if there’s a lot of money at stake. ‘Jerry’s news right now,’ Alistair said. ‘In a year the public will have forgotten him and we’ll have to pack him off to prison again to get him back in the headlines.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I said.
As predicted, Jerry wanted to make last-minute alterations and I was summoned to Berkeley Square to discuss them. ‘Be diplomatic,’ Alistair said. ‘Let him shift a comma or two. You’ve done a great job. We don’t want him buggering it up at this stage. He’s a total prick but he’ll sell millions.’
‘On the telephone,’ I said in a carefully noncommittal voice, ‘he said he wasn’t happy about the fate of de Villefort. Jerry thinks he should be killed off in an incredibly gory manner instead of simply disgraced.’
‘De Villefort?’
‘The judge.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. Actually, I think the original de Villefort was the prosecuting counsel – but never mind that. What you must remember, Cookie, is that all authors pinch their plots – that’s perfectly okay, as long as they pinch good ones – and we know they do, but we must never let them know we know. Writers are very sensitive about accusations of plagiarism. You know Pamela Winters? Feminist thrillers – one of them was televised recently.’ I nodded. ‘She’s very upmarket now, but she started her career with a bodice-ripper. Shocking stuff – anti-heroine who should’ve been played by Faye Dunaway in her younger days, wallowing in incest and murder and so on. No, of course I didn’t read it, never read anything of ours if I can help it, but Twocan did the paperback. Anyhow, Pamela was at a lit party here when some bright spark of a junior editor pointed out the story-line was cribbed virtually intact from a famous children’s classic. Winters was so upset she tore up the contract with us and gave her next book to Hodder.’
‘What happened to the junior editor?’ I asked.
‘Last heard of selling double glazing.’
I didn’t believe that part, but it was a good story.
(Out of curiosity, I subsequently picked up an old copy of the bodice-ripper and read it. The junior editor was perfectly right – the children’s classic had been a staple of my youthful library, so I recognised it at once.)
None of this assisted me in managing Jerry Beauman.
On my arrival he greeted me with a preoccupied air, oozing rather less Klingon charm than usual. There was a faint frown between his brows that never quite vanished, deepening when the phone rang, but after the maid had given the identity of the caller he seemed to relax. ‘Tell him I’m working,’ he said. ‘Take a message.’ Then he turned back to me, and the fate of the doomed judge. ‘I think it falls a bit flat, having him merely lose face. I know he’s defrocked –’ (‘That’s bishops,’ I muttered) ‘– and has to live in seclusion in the heart of the country and is socially ostracised, but we need something a bit stronger. If he were to have a fatal car crash, with the imputation that it was a little more than an Act of God . . .’
‘If your hero orders – or even condones – a murder by one of his ex-con pals,’ I said, ‘I think he would run the risk of losing the readers’ sympathy.’
‘But my God, the judge is corrupt, he’s greedy, he’s an evil bastard – any intelligent reader would feel he deserves to die!’
‘Maybe,’ I said (diplomatically), ‘but they wouldn’t want the hero involved.’
‘What if we showed he has an unnatural relationship with his daughter? Perhaps if he raped her—’
‘He’s already driven her to drink and drugs. We really mustn’t overdo it. The changes we can make at this stage are rather limited . . .’
‘Look, Emma, this book has to be right. You may not know, but I’m a perfectionist. My public expect certain things from me: a great story, gripping narrative, but above all, literary integrity.’ What? ‘They want to see justice being done. It may not always happen in real life, but they know that in immortal print I’ll give them the proper ending.’ In a strange way, it was an echo of the fantasy writer’s sentiment: Fiction is there to encourage people. Only when the writer was Jerry Beauman, I wasn’t sure what people were being encouraged to do.
‘Supposing his wife leaves him?’ I suggested desperately. ‘They’ve been married thirty – forty years, she’s stood by him through everything. And now at last she sees what he’s really like, and she walks out. He’s utterly alone. There’s no one left for him . . .’
‘He kills himself! Brilliant. Brilliant.’ The phone rang again, and he got to his feet. ‘That’s exactly what I was looking for. You and I really are a great team. Hang on: I won’t be long.’
I sighed, but faintly. The maid had announced: ‘Sir Harold Chorley,’ and Jerry’s frown snapped back into place. We’d been sitting on one of the sofas in order to pore over the proofs together; now, he retired into the study, closing the door. When the maid disappeared I tried to listen, but I didn’t dare go too far from the sofa in case she came back, and I could hear very little. ‘Yes, Sir Harold – No, Sir Harold – I can assure you, Sir Harold, I discharged my obligations to Dryden with absolute integrity – I had no foreknowledge of the position at all . . .’ That was the second time he’d used the word integrity in the space of ten minutes. Curious how people who don’t have any always feel compelled to talk about it. And he’d mentioned Dryden again. I have a good memory for names, even without writing them down: I knew it was one he’d used during his last phone conversation in camera. I really should check up on it some time.
I think he made another call himself but I was feeling nervous, hovering near the door, and returned to my station o
n the sofa. When Jerry re-emerged he was curt, saying he had to go out and would see me tomorrow; I could remain in the flat and work for a while (whether I wanted to or not). A chauffeur was summoned who looked more like a minder, a bulky six foot three with the sort of lumpy, battered face that seemed to have been on the receiving end of too many punches. I wasn’t sure what a cauliflower ear was, but I suspected he had two. He wore no uniform and answered Jerry in a Scots accent as thick as porridge. Beauman called him MacMurdo.
When they had gone I took the initiative, requesting tea from the maid. When she brought the tray she explained, rather timidly, that she had to go to the shops. Would I be all right on my own? (I would.) It was not necessary to answer the telephone because there was a machine.
‘Fine,’ I said.
And then I was alone in Jerry’s flat.
I could almost hear Georgie’s voice whispering in my ear, like a devil sent to tempt me. I stared resolutely down at the proofs, roughing out a few sample sentences for Jerry’s approval, in which I attempted to condense the departure of the judge’s wife and his consequent suicide into so few words that it wouldn’t throw out the entire section. Fortunately, we were at the end of a chapter. There was a fair-sized blank space over the page. I reduced the required passage into five sentences, crossed my fingers that Jerry wouldn’t change them too much, pocketed my felt-tip, and set off to explore the flat. The money was in a safe place, Jerry had said. Not the safe – a safe place. What would be a safe place for half a million pounds?
Ordinary drawers and cupboards were obviously out: it wasn’t a sum you could hide under your knickers. There might be a secret drawer or concealed compartment in the study desk, but even if there was, surely it wouldn’t be big enough. After glancing round the vast acreage of the living room, I followed my instinct and went into the master bedroom. Anything of value, I reasoned, you want hidden somewhere close to you, in your personal space. Overnight guests might occupy other bedrooms, visitors colonise the sofas or meander across the parquet, but the study and the master bedroom were Jerry’s exclusive territory. There was a huge four-poster bed, with scalloped drapery above and a pleated flounce below. Any hint of femininity was counteracted by the colour-scheme, which was predominantly red. There were whole walls of built-in wardrobes, walnut doors polished to a mirror gloss. Other doors were panelled with actual mirrors, so the entire room gleamed, the lighting (there was lots) glancing from door to door, reflections and bright shadows flickering around you with every movement. A large unit beside the bed (more walnut) opened to reveal a widescreen TV with video and DVD, and a complex sound system. Remotes were on the bedside table, along with a humidor of cigars and an enormous modern silver ashtray which, I thought privately, was the nicest thing in the room.
