The waiter rearranged chairs and squeezed them in somehow, and I was immediately distracted from Tube Man’s presence by the sight of Sergei’s face close up, looking bruised and sort of tight and odd under heavy make-up, more as if he’d been in a fight than had the flu. I’d never known him to go out wearing full stage slap before.
Grabbing his arm, I gasped, ‘Sergei, what on earth has happened to your f—’
But he interrupted me – talked right over me, in fact. ‘Let me introduce to you Nathan Cedar, Tsarina. Nathan, this is the friend of my heart Tina Devino, and …’
His voice went on and on in the background but I was lost to the world, gazing across the table into gorgeously treacly dark eyes … Drowning unresisting in warm molasses … Sinking serendipitously into …
‘Tina!’ Linny said sharply, and I sighed deeply and came back round in time to hear Sergei lavishly ordering champagne (which he drank like water anyway) because he had something to celebrate. Knowing Sergei, I thought this could be anything from winning a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to ballet, to finding the false eyelash he lost a month previously.
Tube Man (or Nathan as I must learn to call him) and I were still sort of half-smiling at each other when Sergei announced: ‘I have written my memoirs, Tina. Full and frank in every detail, and Nathan here is representing me – and already a publisher has taken it, and serial rights have been sold to the Sunday Times, so it will be a bestseller, for clearly all wish to know about Sergei Popov!’
Linny said hollowly that she knew enough already, and I said to Sergei, ‘Writing your memoirs? But – why didn’t you tell me? I thought … I mean, all this last year when you have seemed so preoccupied and—’
Then I stopped dead as something else he’d said registered. I turned back to Nathan: ‘You are a literary agent?’
‘Yes – I used to work for Bigg and Blew, but now I’ve set up on my own as the Cedar Literary Agency. I only intended doing fiction until Sergei persuaded me otherwise. And are you the Tina Devino, the novelist?’
We both laughed and agreed it was a small world, especially the publishing one, and he said he must have been stupid not to have made the connection straight away, because he’d seen me about and he’d read all my books (which he said quite unselfconsciously so – big relieved sigh – he didn’t realize he’s the frigging hero in them), which had my photo on the back. And I said yes, I was often in this part of London as I was an old friend of Sergei (the man currently looking jealous and sulky under his Pan Stik foundation), and my friend Linny also lived nearby in Primrose Hill.
Linny broke in and said, ‘Do you live nearby too, Nathan?’
He said he lived round the corner from Sergei, actually, and they’d first met in the deli and got talking about this bizarre incident when the fountain in the square had its basin filled with bleeding red roses, and then to my surprise Linny asked him straight out if he’d read one of her manuscripts.
There was hope for her writing yet if she could seize the opportunity like that, especially when at least half of what brain she possessed must have been wondering if pregnancy bras came in 36FF.
While Nathan was professionally fielding that one, I turned and took a good long look at Sergei, who shifted uneasily under my scrutiny, and asked him if he’d been fighting.
‘Not at all,’ he said stuffily. ‘I had a little fall when made dizzy by the flu and bruised my face.’
‘I don’t know about bruised,’ I said critically. ‘It looks more as if it’s been stretched, pummelled and frozen.’ But even as the words left my mouth, the penny dropped and I realized he hadn’t had flu at all, but a facelift or something else fairly radical in the Peter Pan line.
‘Oh God, Sergei, what have you done?’ I hissed, appalled. ‘I loved the character in your face, and all the wrinkles and lines! How could you?’
He vehemently denied having had a facelift at all. ‘Perhaps just a little Botox here and there, Tsarina,’ he said evasively, but I knew. (And so did Linny, she said later. She recognized the symptoms instantly, due to all her friends having had something done to their faces.)
‘I am looking younger already,’ he said complacently, recovering his sangfroid. ‘Soon you will grow accustomed – now you are jealous that younger women will find me irresistible!’
And I said no I wasn’t and no they wouldn’t, though actually he always had been pretty irresistible to everybody. It was just the way he was. Why did I have to go and fall for a handsome, tricky, devious, secretive man again? Wasn’t marrying one enough for me?
‘And that foundation you’re wearing is entirely the wrong colour,’ I added rather pettishly, and turned back to the infinitely more natural and Heathcliffian features of Nathan.
He was just telling Linny that he would look at her most recent book, but he couldn’t promise anything, when I caught his eye and asked if he fancied having me as well.
He went a bit pink under his tan and said he thought I was already with someone, glancing at Sergei, who was glowering into his champagne. And you can only sustain just so much of this innuendo in the presence of a jealous lover, so I said not at all, actually I was parting company with my present agent, Miracle Threaple, and desperately needed another. He said he knew Miracle, and if I was serious why didn’t we get together on Wednesday and talk it over? He gave me his card.
He was clearly uncertain about the situation between Sergei and me, and so was I, come to that, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have my cake and eat it, because Sergei did, after all. Although now I had met Tube Man I was feeling terribly ambivalent because, like dieting, sometimes it’s enough just to look at the cake; you don’t have to eat it, and if you do you know the pleasure will be momentary and the pain horrendous.
It was all a bit tricky, and so I wasn’t that upset when Linny dragged me away early, saying we were going on somewhere, which we were: we went on to the nearest all-night chemist by taxi.
And my God, she was going to have a tiny Tertius!
Fifteen
Past Notes
NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY
Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven
Dear Ms Pucklington,
Or Elvira, as you have so kindly asked me to call you.
I am absolutely delighted to hear of the instant acceptance of Beyond Rubber by Red Hot Candy Press, a well-deserved success, and am deeply touched by your intention of dedicating the book to me. I certainly look forward to that signed copy you have kindly offered to send me as soon as it is in print!
This is surely the start of a long and happy career and I will observe your progress with interest.
With many congratulations,
Tina Devino
Back home in my own chaste bed by midnight, due to Tertius arriving home unexpectedly to find us both swooning over the preggie test, and talk about being a gooseberry – they hardly realized I was there, what with Linny being in a deep state of shock and Tershie delirious with pleasure. So I said I really wanted to get back home, and didn’t protest for once when Tershie sent me off in a taxi with a fistful of tenners, and really I ought to give the extra ones back because he gave me way too much.
Of course I phoned Sergei the second I got in because he did not generally go to bed before the dawn and probably not at all when he’d just had darts and pin-tucks sewn into his face, which had got to hurt. I could hear faint strains of music and voices chatting in the background just like most nights chez Popov.
‘Sergei,’ I said, ‘in your full and frank memoirs, what did you say about me?’
He insisted that he had named no names but just said that although he had had many lovers over the years only one woman did he truly love with all his heart, and he had referred to me simply as ‘T’.
I said people were going to guess, though, weren’t they? And by the way, were these many lovers before, or concurrent with, this great love for me?
‘Poof – they were nothing!’ he as
sured me, which didn’t answer anything. ‘I exaggerate, I change things a little – but mostly I write about my brilliant career and many, many successes …’
Then he started to enumerate his starring roles and I blanked it out, as usual, just like I used to do with Tim and his eternal bloody football. But from long force of habit I broke in before he got on to the subject of the overweight ballerina who had so irrevocably strained his back while he was lifting her and so prematurely ended his career, and asked, ‘But can I read it now, Sergei, so I know what to expect?’
‘No, my beloved Tina, because I wish to place the first copy of the book into your hands myself,’ he said, which sounded romantic enough except that by then millions of Sunday Times readers, me included, would already have seen chunks of it.
Eventually I gave up. ‘I’ll have to go, Sergei – I’m exhausted,’ I said, and I must have been, because I forgot to tell him about Linny’s news – not that it had quite sunk in, it seemed so improbable.
‘Goodnight, my darling Tsarina,’ he said in his terribly sexy voice, but it didn’t seem to work when I knew he looked like Frankenstein’s monster after a Trinny and Susannah makeover.
My mind went whipping round in circles all night, faster than Minnie in her little wheel, while the wind howled and thundered down the chimney of my cottage as if it was on Linny’s diet. Only now she would be able to eat anything she liked, for clearly Tertius would be absolute putty in her hands – and how could my oldest friend do this to me? I mean, life was never going to be the same with an infant in the offing, was it?
Not surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep: if I shut my eyes I saw Tube Man’s delightful dark ones smiling at me, and if I opened them I heard Sergei’s voice saying he was going to publish full and frank memoirs, and I worried just how full and frank, even if he wasn’t naming names.
Certainly Tube Man – I mean Nathan – would have realized by then that I was the ‘T’ of the book, and I’d really have liked to know how much he knew about my private life – which seemed to be becoming less and less private by the day.
But maybe all this was the price I had to pay for fame? And if Sergei’s book was a bit too full and frank, would that be good publicity or bad? And what was Nathan thinking about me now he knew who I was? Did it matter? I mean, he may be gorgeous and haunt my dreams, but if he was going to become my agent that was all he must be allowed to haunt, because it just wasn’t going to work otherwise, was it? Not that I didn’t fancy him even more now I’d actually seen him close up – and he seemed to like me, too … only once he’d remembered all the ghastly things Sergei had probably written about our so great passion he might have changed his mind.
I really needed to see that manuscript!
Well, I tossed and turned all night, and come the morning I made my mind up that I was going to sneak into Sergei’s flat and see if I could get a peek at the manuscript while he was off teaching his prancing pupils, this being his day for his Royal Ballet masterclass.
I had the key … what I couldn’t think of was a good excuse should I be found out. I just had to hope that no one noticed me and I didn’t get caught – and that Nathan didn’t have the only copy of the memoirs.
I arrived mid-morning when I knew the coast would be clear, trying to look casual, because after all, everyone locally would have seen me coming and going for years. But my heart was hammering as I tripped gaily down the steps, unlocked the door and stepped into the quiet flat – the quiet dark flat, for the back wall seemed to have been curtained off with thick, opaque blue polythene, presumably against builder’s dust. His renovations must have been more extensive than I’d thought.
Considering how well I knew the flat, it felt very odd to be standing there in the silent semi-dark – but of course I had not been there alone since Petruschka went through the great cat flap in the sky.
In fact, it was ages and ages since I’d even stayed overnight. Years. I’d always preferred to sleep in my own place, to love and then be alone, as it were, and so had Sergei, fortunately, besides being a morning person like me, and actually when I thought about it we were similar in more ways than I’d ever have dreamed of. Besides, if I had to stay over in London, I preferred to go to Linny’s, where I could have a luxurious little en suite to myself and come and go as I pleased.
Wondering if he’d turned it into an office, I stuck my head into the tiny boxroom, but it was still a rather sparsely furnished bedroom. There was a photo of Sergei with Grigor on the chest of drawers, and clothes hanging in the wardrobe that didn’t look like Sergei’s sort of thing at all, which was odd …
Grigor couldn’t be living here, could he? I mean, Sergei had found it difficult enough sharing his personal space with a cat, let alone another ego. (Though come to think of it, cats have pretty big egos, too.) Maybe Sergei simply let his protégé store some things here, or Grigor was between flats, or something?
Puzzled, I went out of the room and back to my normal habitat where my own glossy picture stared back at me from a mirrored Venetian frame surrounded by a collection of empty-eyed masks, while huge black-and-white arty photos of Sergei flying about through the air in every possible pose adorned all the other walls. He had thigh muscles like you wouldn’t believe.
I found what I was searching for in the cubbyhole off the kitchen where he kept his bureau, adrift with press cuttings and other memorabilia. There was a laptop and a wad of manuscript, inexpertly typed and entitled: Travels Through a Life by Sergei Popov. I felt sure that title had been used before. But then, there is no copyright in titles just as there is no copyright in plots, which is just as well when half the books that come out these days seem to be either based on someone else’s or Shakespeare, who is a bottomless mine of gold as far as most writers are concerned, as is Jane Austen.
But certainly no one else had lived Sergei’s life, so that would be entirely novel, and also full marks to him for effort, because at least it looked like he had written the whole damned thing himself – no ghosts required.
I sat at his desk, took the elastic band off and began to flick through the pages, but there was an awful lot of it and I quickly realized there wasn’t time to go through the whole thing. So instead I concentrated on trying to find ‘T’, whom he touchingly referred to as his ‘great love’ when I did track myself down, although you couldn’t fail to notice that all the other letters of the alphabet seemed to be randomly scattered throughout as well.
I couldn’t see anything explicit, and so far as I could tell, his full and frank disclosures seemed to be more in the nature of, ‘I have had many, many lovers in my life …’ rather than a blow-by-blow account of what he got up to with them, so that was all right, I think. I mean, ‘T’ could have been anyone, couldn’t it? And if people drew conclusions – well, I didn’t have to admit it; I could still carry on with the enigmatic stuff.
I was just trying to find the more recent parts to see what he’d said about being faithful to me – or not – when the grating of a key in the front-door lock turned the blood in my veins to ice.
There is something lithe and fast about the way a dancer moves on stage – and generally something languid and slow off it. Even so, he was there in the doorway while I was still standing clutching pages of manuscript to my frozen heart.
‘Tina?’
‘Grigor?’
‘What are you doing here?’ we exclaimed in unison.
He looked just as guilty and startled as I probably did. Then his eye fell on the pages of manuscript I was still holding and he stepped into the room saying, ‘I think I came on the same mission you did, Tina. I want to see just what Sergei has said about me in his memoirs.’
‘What were you expecting?’ I enquired coldly as he approached. I’d forgotten just how very tall and muscular he was close to, and my back was up against the desk with nowhere to retreat to.
‘Probably not what you think,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but I do have an interest.’
‘Oh?’ Turni
ng casually, I laid the papers back on to the stack and repositioned the whole thing just the way I’d found it. ‘Well, I only had time to flick through, so it could take you hours to find yourself. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’
He was staring, slightly aghast, at the huge heap. ‘Is it chronological? I didn’t expect it to be quite this big, and he might come back early today. Maybe I should just wait for it to be published, only—’
‘He refers to most people by nicknames or just a letter,’ I said helpfully, since he was still blocking my way out. ‘Shall we have a quick look at what “G” has been up to? Only I’ve seen some of your things in the spare room while I was searching, so perhaps you’d like to enlighten me about what you are afraid of finding?’
He ran his fingers through his dark hair in a strangely familiar gesture, and then suddenly gave me rather a nice smile and said, ‘Oh, what the hell! We may both be here for the same thing but for entirely different reasons, and I’m tired of pretending and having innuendoes made about me and Sergei all the time—’
But I knew what he was going to say before he said it: something about the smile, and the way it changed his face, and his airily expansive gestures.
‘Sergei’s my father,’ Grigor said. ‘He left me and my mother behind in Russia when he came here.’
‘I’d guessed,’ I told him (even though it was only by a five-second margin), then frowned. ‘So, he doesn’t want to acknowledge you?’ It seemed surprisingly ungenerous of Sergei.
‘No, I don’t want him to acknowledge me!’ he said fiercely. ‘I didn’t want to get any breaks because of who my father is. I wanted to get them because I was the best.’
He was terribly arrogant. ‘You are amazingly like Sergei really,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised I haven’t spotted it before.’
‘No, I am not like him in the least. I am now entirely British. I don’t go around like a Russian aristo in a bad old film speaking broken English, and also I am completely faithful to my girlfriend, whom I will marry when we have saved the deposit for a house.’
Written From the Heart Page 10
