Brenda had called round, a zealot in the field of neighbourly responsibility, to speak of the children’s gastronomic preferences, and what time they normally went to bed. I said over and over again that they would eat whatever was put before them, and go to bed when they were told, the earlier the better, while my offspring stood just behind Brenda looking daggers. As Brenda had burst forth from my front door, still uttering cries of ‘savoury flans!’ and ‘chips with everything!’ she walked, literally, into Declan, who was engaged in uprooting the dandelions that edged the path from door to gate.
‘Look where you’re going, wumman!’ he said.
‘I’m so sorry, Declan,’ cried Brenda, quite girlishly. ‘I never saw you there!’
She had then sidled past him with much exaggerated care-taking, hunching her shoulders and sucking in her stomach in a manner that was a direct repudiation of everything the women’s movement stood for. As she sashayed through the gate I caught once more on Declan’s face that look which had disturbed me before. But yet again it was gone before I had time to analyse it.
But now, to hell with all of them! I was finally on my way, and not one of the poor fools I had left behind me in Basset Magna had the remotest idea what I would be getting up to at the Fartenwald Dynamik. Airborne over Europe, with Ricky to attend to my every need, I was gloriously incommunicado. I felt that kind of detached euphoria which accompanies the first stage of drunkenness, before the vomiting sets in. I seemed to myself to be astonishingly brave and clever and witty and attractive.
‘Mrs Blair—leekyewera?’
I started violently, nearly slopping my half-drunk coffee. Ricky’s co-steward. Dirk, was there, with pad and ballpoint poised.
‘I’m sorry?’
Dirk was a Scot with a nasal, Miss Brodie-ish way of enunciating words, so as to give them several supernumerary syllables.
There was the merest suggestion of a pained sigh.
‘Berrandeeah, Mrs Blair? Hooeeskeeah, He-jambooeeah?’
The linguistic fog had lifted for a split second, long enough, thank God, for me to understand the question.
‘Why not?’ I said, rhetorically. ‘I’d like a small cognac.’
‘A smarl coeneearc and hoo-aye not …’ intoned Dirk. He scribbled briefly and moved on, to inflict his strangulated vowels on someone else.
My brandy arrived, and I took from my handbag the densely packed itinerary which Era had sent me. I was to be met at Fartenwald airport by Tristan, who had been in situ for two days prior to the Buchfest in order to oversee the setting up of the Era stand. He would take me by car to the Dynamik where the itinerary proclaimed first, tersely, ‘Tea. Briefing’, and then, more obligingly, ‘Evening free’. Constantine and I had agreed to meet up at the hotel this evening so that we could in all honesty respond to enquiries by saying we ‘ ran into each other at the same hotel’. I did not even know what flight he was arriving on. The delicious chanciness of the whole arrangement had me squirming in my seat. The prospect of three nights in a four-star hotel, unencumbered by my dependants, would alone have been enough to fill me with rapture, but when Constantine was added to the brew it became heady stuff indeed. I could only conclude that my particular Lares and Penates had decided it was my turn for some fun. And by God I was going to have it!
Thanks to Era’s generosity in the matter of first-class travel I actually stepped off the plane feeling fresher than when I’d got on. I fancied I looked every inch the successful (but approachable) author. With the Buchfest in mind I had bought a dashing, mannish trouser suit in cream linen, beneath which I wore a white silk camisole. Not wishing to be let down by shoddy accessories (a dreadful eventuality which magazines continually warn against), I had also purchased a (mock) snakeskin clutch bag and cream low-heeled pumps. The slight tan I had acquired through regular jogging, watching soccer and attending the gymkhana was much enhanced by this ensemble and for once I felt that I should not be outshone by whatever eccentrically modish rig-out Vanessa might be affecting.
As is so often the way, at the same moment that I thought of Vanessa, I saw her. I had just reached the meeting area at Fartenwald, and was casting about for Tristan. The tourist-class passengers were milling about behind me and there, amongst them, was my editor, talking animatedly to (I could scarcely believe it) Constantine Ghikas. Completely taken aback, and not a little miffed, I hastily looked away again and bumped straight into Tristan.
‘Whoops,’ he said, clasping my shoulders, ‘steady on! We don’t want our best author breaking a leg before you’ve even started.’
‘Sorry, I just …’
‘You look spiffy. Had a good trip?’
‘Very good, yes, wonderful,’ I babbled. ‘I’ve never flown first-class before.’
Tristan’s bland, smooth face assumed its customary expression of unctuous complacency. I was such a hard-working author, it was a pleasure for Era Books to provide me with lovely treats in return. I glanced nervously over my shoulder.
‘Seen someone you know?’ he enquired, beginning to guide me in the direction of the exit.
I glanced back again, still undecided what my answer should be, but unfortunately this time Vanessa caught my eye and waved gaily, lifting Constantine’s nerveless hand as she did so like a boxing ref with a new champ. She was obviously trying to tell me something.
‘There’s Vanessa,’ I said.
‘Really, old Nessa? Oh, yes—Nessa!’
Vanessa began to elbow her way through the crowds towards us, dragging Constantine after her. He did not appear flustered by this treatment, but accepted it with his usual good grace. He was so bloody gorgeous in every respect that all my erectile tissues stood to attention just looking at him.
Vanessa wore little baggy shorts like a nappy; sandals with thongs that criss-crossed to the knee; and a white T-shirt so startlingly backless and loose that it threatened to slip right off her narrow shoulders and reveal her naked torso. She looked amusing, stylish, predatory—and young. My heart plummeted down through the white camisole and cream trousers and came to rest somewhere beneath the incipient blisters caused by my too-new shoes.
‘Well,’ said Tristan, ‘the clans are gathering. Hallo, dear,’ he said, kissing Vanessa on both cheeks. ‘How’s you?’
Sloane and Drone roared with self-congratulatory laughter while Constantine and I stood on either side like a pair of fire-dogs, pop-eyed and ostensibly detached, wondering what the hell we were supposed to make of each other.
Vanessa swung round to address me, catching me in the eye as she did so with an errant spike from her sun-ray hairstyle. Unfortunately my nose always goes out in sympathy with my eyes, so while mascara poured down my cheek, snot poured from my nose, and I rummaged, snuffling like a hedgehog, for a tissue in my clutchbag.
Vanessa, all ‘Vent Desert’ and lip gloss, was unmoved by my plight.
‘Surprise, surprise, I found a friend of yours!’ she cried.
‘Oh—so you did,’ I responded vivaciously, dabbing and wiping and wondering if I looked like the pirate king with one black eye and one bald one.
‘Hallo—er—’ I wasn’t sure how Constantine had seen fit to quantify our relationship. Should I address him as ‘doctor’? or ‘Constantine’? Or ‘old thing’? Or gaily, perhaps, as ‘sexy’or ‘hotlips’?
Fortunately Constantine himself came to my rescue, poised as ever. Leaning across he planted a friendly kiss on my zebra-striped cheek and said: ‘Harriet, this is so delightful. Vanessa was telling me all about the book fair on the way over, and how you were going to be in Fartenwald—and now it transpires we’re going to be in the same hotel. We’ll be able to have dinner together if these slave-drivers will let you.’
Hearing his name mentioned, Tristan chimed in. ‘Of course we will! Tristan Whirly-Birch, Era Books, how do you do. Harriet’s entitled to her free time, and it’s nice to know she won’t be on her own.’
This, at least, was said with sincerity, as the presence of a friend from ho
me with whom I could have dinner would allow the Erans to roister at the Rumpel Inn with clear consciences.
We set off, an ill-assorted quartet, in the direction of the main exit. Vanessa told Tristan what Constantine’s name was, Tristan repeated it all wrong, and Constantine smilingly corrected him. I felt a terrible sense of let-down, that my first encounter with my lover at Fartenwald should be in the company of the chief Erans. But Constantine, never one to let the shining hour pass by unfilled, set about elaborating on his alibi.
‘I quite often come to Fartenwald, actually,’ he said, addressing us all. ‘A friend of mine from my medical school days teaches at the Institute here. On this occasion it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday for me—he’s asked me to sing for my supper.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Vanessa, bright-eyed with specious curiosity. ‘ Give liver transplants to foreign publishers?’
‘Why not, if the price is right?’ replied Constantine. ‘What a Japanese editor would call foleign lights, perhaps …’
When the hilarity following on this gem had subsided, he added: ‘No, he wants me to speak at a seminar on pre-conception care.’
‘Pre-conception?’ said Tristan. ‘Whatever will they think of next?’
‘I think it’s tremendous,’ offered Vanessa. I smothered a smirk. Pre-conception care, indeed.
Tristan summoned a cab out of the ether as only old Etonians can, and said over his shoulder: ‘I just hope if the GM comes that he won’t get overexcited. He has such bloody bizarre notions about books.’
After a brief, painfully polite wrangle over who should sit where we piled into the taxi, with Tristan in the front to direct operations and the rest of us in the back with me in the middle. Constantine’s thigh was hard and hot against mine, his face cool and polite as he listened to Tristan.
‘… he will insist on taking command, and sending us off on these wild goose chases, armed with blank cheques, to buy the most impossible books. He veers wildly between dry-as-dust tomes on ancient cultures, or feverish soft corn …’
‘… known to get quite beside himself over female prison warders,’ went on Vanessa, taking up the theme with enthusiasm, ‘and nurses, of course. He once tried to get us to bid a hundred thousand for a book of American health statistics, just because there were lots of photos of ward sisters and whatnot.’
‘Well, we all know what they say about nurses, don’t we?’ asked Tristan rhetorically. ‘ But then Constantine would know at first hand?’
‘Who, me? I’m afraid I’ve led a very sheltered life,’ said Constantine blandly, with admirable composure. He was fantastic. ‘Tell me,’ he went on, ‘do you intend doing much serious business this week, or is it just for show?’
The gentle retaliation in this remark was not wasted on the Erans who at once reorganised their features into expressions of pained reflection, to show that beneath the glitz they were sensitive, committed people who loved their work.
‘It all depends what you mean,’ said Tristan warily. ‘There won’t be that many deals signed, sealed and delivered, very little cash actually changing hands. We’re mostly here to see and be seen, but not just for show as you put it.’ Vanessa shook her head in vehement repudiation of the very idea. ‘No, it’s a lot more than that. It’s a market place, we’re all displaying what we’ve got and seeing what others have to offer.’
‘I’m with you,’ said Constantine, and pressed his trousered leg ardently to mine.
‘This is why Harriet’s going to be so invaluable to us,’ explained Vanessa. ‘She’s our window dressing—you don’t mind me calling you that, do you, Harriet?—and of course she’ll go round talking to people about Love’s Dying Glory, and perhaps even The Remembrance Tree.’
‘Is that your new one?’ asked Constantine.
‘Mm,’ I said.
‘She’s being awfully secretive about it at the moment,’ said Vanessa.
‘Maybe you can prise something out of her over the roast venison tonight, Constantine?’
‘I shall certainly try,’ said Constantine, smiling at me.
‘Aha! Constantine will be our mole!’ cried Tristan.
I did wish they would stop using his name all the time. It had been weeks, for God’s sake, before I had plucked up courage to ‘Constantine’ him.
At this point the taxi driver, who had until now been no more than a pair of shoulders and a crew-cut, burst into life like an actor who has waited a long time for his one line.
‘Here is Dynamik!’ he announced, as if warning us against dullness.
We disembarked, and the driver got our bags out of the boot. As Tristan fiddled with Deutschmarks, the driver enquired: ‘You for Buchfest?’
‘Ja,’ said Vanessa.
‘Books I like,’ he went on expansively. ‘Sornbirds, Princess Tisey, Lice—’
‘Lice?’ said Vanessa. ‘Nichts verstehen.’
‘Vitch off you bitches iss my muzzer? Lice!’ explained the driver, getting quite pink with the effort of making his point. Tristan, for once, looked baffled.
‘Shirley Conran, perhaps …?’ offered Constantine diffidently.
‘Ja, ja!’
‘Oh, Lace, ja,’ said Vanessa.
From Tristan’s expression I deduced that he had given up trying to work out percentages in Deutschmarks, and was anyway far more anxious to put a stop to the driver’s effusions. He handed over a handful of cash with expense-account abandon, our cases were taken by a doorman dressed in bottle-green breeches, white stockings, a frogged jacket and a cockaded hat, and we followed him to the reception desk.
Our business there completed, Constantine said: ‘I must make myself scarce, I think. Shall we meet for a drink later, Harriet?’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘Six-thirty, then, in the bar?’
Flanked by the Erans I watched him go, like a drowning man watching the lifeboat being carried away on a current.
‘Some tea?’ suggested Tristan. ‘We can just fill you in on what you’ll be doing, then we’ll leave you in peace to settle in.’
They assisted me to a table in the main lounge, walking on either side of me like nurses in a mental hospital. Over tea they explained what I already knew from our previous meeting and the itinerary: that I had many appointments with important foreign publishers, the most crucial among which were the Americans, who might well be knifing each other for the rights of my book but who still needed buttering up; that for some of the time I should be on the Era stand, displaying myself rather like a tart in her window on the Reeperbahn, ready to pull in anyone who showed the remotest interest in my wares; and finally that I should be expected to eat and drink enormous quantities at other people’s expense in order to impress them with the literary merits of LDG and TRT.
‘I’m absolutely certain,’ said Tristan, addressing Vanessa across me as though they were a couple of proud grandparents with a tiny grandchild, ‘that Harriet’s presence here is going to make an enormous difference to the Cosmos paperback campaign. She’s so good at this sort of thing, everyone’ll be eating out of her hand.’
‘I don’t know about that …’ I murmured.
‘It’s true!’ shrilled Vanessa. And then, more confidentially: ‘I’m relying on your dishy medical adviser to squeeze the details of The Remembrance Tree out of you, you know …’
‘Yes, well, we shall have to see,’ I replied.
Eventually they declared that they would have to go—it was approaching the happy hour at the Rumpel Inn—and I went up to my room. My case was there, the bed was turned down, and the lamp lit. On the table was an ice bucket containing a small bottle of courtesy champagne, and a bunch of freesias, ribbon-tied and bearing a card. I picked up the card and read: ‘See you soon—K.’
For the intervening hour I feverishly prowled my suite. Such was my state of readiness that I fancied I had one of those bottoms like an inflated Victoria plum, which afford untold interest and amusement to the spectators at any monk
ey-house.
I had a bath, of course, assiduously using the many commodities provided by the Dynamik—bath oils, powder, shampoo, soap, body lotion and a deep-pile towel for each part of my body—and managed to lie motionless for about five minutes in the steaming water.
The Dynamik was a grand, baroque, old-fashioned hotel which had been brought up to date by the simple expedient of tacking on as many modern conveniences as possible to the existing building. The decor of my suite ran to streaky velvet, knobbly chintz, a four-poster and a magnificent, if threadbare, Persian carpet. The bathroom had a bath with griffon’s feet and many mighty pipes coiling and writhing in all directions like pythons at an orgy. The sitting room was furnished with massive, dark chairs, and two paintings depicting scenes in a boar hunt, with appropriate Teutonic gloom and ferocity. Amongst all this sombre grandeur the twenty-four-inch colour telly, digital phone, teasmade and teak minibar stood out like punks at a dowagers’ tea-party.
I wasted another couple of minutes deciding what to wear, but my two dresses were still rather creased from the suitcase, and I decided to stay with the cream suit which was new and expensive and unlike anything he’d seen me in before.
At twenty past six I sprayed myself liberally from the cutglass atomiser of Dynamikwasser, thoughtfully provided by the management, and then realised I probably smelt like every chambermaid in the place and tucked a freesia in my button-hole to adulterate the scent.
Finally, at twenty-five past I took up my snakeskin clutch bag and my room key, and ventured forth to meet Kostaki—had he not signed himself ‘K’?— in the cocktail bar.
The corridor outside my suite had that air of hushed, thick-piled, well-insulated secrecy which is the special characteristic of the old-fashioned hotel. I felt that the Dynamik, like a worldly but well-bred aunt, would guard the naughty secrets of her youthful patrons while never losing her own elegance and dignity.
There wasn’t a soul in sight. The long vistas of the second-floor corridor, with its many doors, and firedoors leading on to other corridors, were like the landscape of a dream. I might have been the only person in the hotel. My footsteps were as silent as a cat’s as I went along to the lift. And, like the cat in the popular verse, my arse was wreathed in smiles.
Hot Breath Page 22
