by Ray Connolly
‘I’m amazed,’ said Colin and scratched his head.
‘I’m staggered,’ said Charlie, which he was. Never in his whole life had anyone paid so much attention to what he was doing. No one with the exception of Kate. Again her face flashed before his mind. All week as young people had edged closer to the piano to watch and listen to him sing and play he had tried to force her from his mind, but her ghost refused to leave him. There were lots of pretty girls in the Mystery Train, and every night they appeared to increase. But every night he left alone.
Marty returned from his meeting with the manager. ‘We’re to discuss new terms on Monday. He wants you for six month, I made him accept three. In the meantime I’m going to do a big mailing job on you. Record companies, radio and TV producers, newspapers … we’ll send them your picture … better yet … a postcard, inviting them down here. If you’re going to be a star, I’m going to be rich. I can’t believe it.’
Charlie shrugged. He couldn’t believe it either. And to be honest with himself he didn’t really care. If Marty wanted to send out pictures of him what did it matter? For fifteen years he had been supporting himself as a musician, and no one had shown anything more than a passing interest and patronizing appreciation. He’d believe the bright lights when they began to blind him. In the meantime he was happy to busk away, playing his songs and wondering what Kate was doing with herself.
Chapter Sixteen
Kate and Barbara took the overnight sleeper north to Perth from Euston. It was a hot Friday night. Travelling by train was Barbara’s idea. It was, she insisted, more romantic and more dignified than flying the shuttle up to Edinburgh or Glasgow, and, you never knew, but Cary Grant might just stumble into their compartment by accident.
The trip to Scotland was Sarah’s suggestion. It marked, thought Kate, the end of her period of chastisement. Wade Brent had obviously passed on his appreciation (possibly even his scoring) to Sarah, and consequently Kate was being put on to the circuit again.
In some ways that was a relief. Too much time alone had led to too many self-doubts. In her job she couldn’t afford doubts. In her position she couldn’t allow the memory of those days with Charlie to confuse her ambitions.
The purpose of the Scottish trip was a house party for a dozen oil men lately beleagured in Aberdeen, Europe’s newest and bleakest boom town. The excuse for the party went under the name of a conference. It was quite likely, Sarah had warned, that representatives from the Scottish Office and the Department of State for Science and Technology would be there to add their pennyworths of advice to the consortiums drilling off the east coast of Scotland. Should that be so those gentlemen were in no way to be entertained, Sarah had insisted. Even if the Secretary of State for Energy himself were to turn up he, too, was to be left well alone. British politicians had given whores a bad name on more than one occasion.
Barbara, of course, thought the whole thing was a great adventure. Both she and Kate had been given instructions about whom they were to make themselves available to, together with all kinds of useful background material about their men, which would hopefully speed along and more quickly cement the proposed relationships.
Although employed by rival companies the man were friends from Harvard days. They were both American, both on their second marriages and both highly placed in the hierarchies of their respective companies – Exxon and Standard Oil of California. They both spent a great deal of their lives commuting between New York, Aberdeen and London, and had been up to Aberdeen to see on the spot operations of their companies’ North Sea oil terminals. Now they were to spend Friday and Saturday in an elegant Tayside private hotel before flying back to London on Sunday.
The party was to take place on the Saturday evening. Everything had been arranged with efficiency and circum spection, the result of a close liaison between Sarah, a friend in the Scottish Office and various inaccurately-titled personnel of Exxon and Standard Oil. There would, of course, be other girls there for the less exalted company men, and a couple of the prettier secretaries out of the London headquarters of Total and BP had been invited up for the entire weekend. But none of this concerned Kate or Barbara. Their missions were straight forward. They were to present themselves to their men, entertain them in whatever way was requested, and hopefully strike up a relationship which could be continued on a more permanent basis when everyone returned to London. And, it had been insisted before they left, everything was to be done with the wit, charm, sophistication and total discretion that was expected of Sarah’s girls.
This was the first time that Barbara and Kate had been asked to go in two-handed, to work, as it were, a double act. No one was suggesting that either of the two targets was out of the very top drawer, but they both were on their way up. They would certainly both make good second and third lines until a couple of new Faroom Asids became available. In Sarah’s business it was important to keep all the avenues open, and to keep a friendly and encouraging eye on the new boys on the executive ladders.
The journey north was memorable only for its discomfort. No rich, handsome bachelor popped his head into the compartment, and even before they left Euston Barbara was ready to concede that there was little romance likely to be found on a British Rail Inter-City sleeper.
It was a two bunk compartment. Kate chose the bottom one, and since two people could not stand and undress at the same time she lay on her bunk and watched while Barbara slipped out of her clothes. Always the exhibitionist, Barbara went to no trouble to conceal her body from her friend, and as she pulled off her panties Kate found that she was turning away and purposely staring into her fashion magazine. Barbara noticed this and giggled aloud as she pulled on a skimpy short nightdress and clambered up the steps on to her bunk.
‘I’ve never known anyone like you, Kate,’ she laughed as she pulled the grey British Rail blankets over her. For a hooker, you’re about as proper as a nun.’
Kate climbed off her bunk and with an exaggerated modesty changed into a very demure and unrevealing nightdress.
‘I’m a Sunday kind of woman,’ she said.
Immediately she regretted the remark, but Barbara was hardly listening: ‘Saturday, Sunday, Monday … it’s all the same to me … I don’t care if the sun don’t shine … I get my loving in the evening time …’
From her bunk below Kate could hear Barbara singing to herself. She stared at her magazine, but it didn’t interest her any more. Once again Charlie had pushed himself out of her subconscious to confront her.
‘Have you changed your mind about Harrigan’s offer?’ she called up to Barbara. Since that day in Morton’s Barbara had never mentioned it.
There was a moment’s pause: ‘No. I’m choosing my moment to tell Sarah,’ came the reply. ‘I wanted everything to be sorted out. Now I think everything is more or less right. Maybe I’ll tell her after the weekend. What about you? Have you changed your mind yet?’
‘No,’ said Kate. In fact she had hardly given the offer any thought. Sarah must have had complete trust in both of them or she wouldn’t have allowed them to work together.
‘How’s your friend from Paramount?’ Kate changed the subject.
‘He went to Rumania.’
Rumania. That was a new excuse, thought Kate, but she didn’t say that. Instead she said: ‘That’s the trouble with film people. Always coming and going.’
‘He’ll be back,’ said Barbara, and Kate sensed she could hear the relish in her friend’s voice. ‘I made sure of that.’
After that they didn’t say much. They were both tired, and after a few minutes Kate put out the light and bade her friend good night. It was, she thought, the first time she had slept in the same room as a girl since she was a young student. She had hated it then, she remembered, always being asked if her clothes might be borrowed and finding it impossible to say no. Was it really only nine years ago?
She lay awake for a long time, uncomfortably aware of the swaying movements of the train, listening to the
deep, regular breathing which soon told her that Barbara was asleep. She wondered what her room mate would be like in Scotland, and if he would sleep so soundly. She doubted it. They rarely did on the first night. For a moment she remembered Charlie failing asleep on her arm in Taormina, but as quickly she pushed the thought from her mind. She couldn’t afford to look backwards. She had to be positive. And lying there rocking as the train listed at eighty miles an hour on a long sweeping bend, she determined to try to enjoy the weekend. It seemed to be the only possible way of getting Charlie out of her mind.
There was a car waiting for tham as they tottered sleepily off the train at half past six the following morning. It was bright and chilly and the two women shivered as they made their way across the platform between stacks of newspapers and staring early morning workers. At the ticket barrier a youth in an outsized uniform tore their tickets in half and returned them, hardly daring to look into their faces.
‘His mother must have warned him about women like us,’ whispered Barbara in a voice quite loud enough for the boy to hear. He went red, and, half-smiling, turned to the porter who was carrying their cases. The porter grinned back at him. Clearly, thought Kate, they would be the talk of Perth station for the next few days.
She wondered if they were so completely obvious. Purposely, with regard to the Scots’ reputation for prudishness, they had both dressed simply for the trip, but their sophistication and self-confidence was impossible to hide.
The car was a large black company Chrysler. The driver, a smart, if taciturn young man from Aberdeen, didn’t need an introduction. As the porter carried the cases out into the station yard, he leapt briskly to the rear of the car, opened a door for his passengers, and then tipping the porter himself, helped load the cases into the luggage boot. With no more than a curt, unsmiling nod of welcome he drove the car quickly out of the yard, and around the solid rust-coloured streets of Perth, before taking the road to Dunkeld and heading up into the Highlands.
At least he knew absolutely what they were there for, Kate mused as the car made its way up the Tay Valley, in and out among the pine forests, and backwards and forwards across the charging river. It was better this way: better when everyone knew his and her place. There wouldn’t have to be any lies today, spoken or otherwise. The truth made life much easier.
The party started as a more formal affair than Kate had expected. During the day she and Barbara had slept off the effects of the journey and had made a short reconnoitre around the grounds of the converted Victorian folly of a manor house in which they were staying.
The hotel seemed to be full of odd-job-type personnel people who had quickly and somewhat brusquely given them to understand that one was expected to dress for dinner in that part of the world. Like the good professionals they were, both had provided well for the occasion. So when at seven o’clock they met on an outside terrace overlooking the river to be introduced to their new partners, Kate was comfortably aware that, in the eyes of most normal men, she and Barbara must look pretty wonderful.
Barbara, as usual, was revealing just that little bit more than anyone else. ‘Well, Kate, aren’t you a lucky girl,’ she said in a loud voice full of exclamation marks as she strode athletically through the scented, murmuring crowd of pretty young women and jovial, shiny-faced, bespoke men.
‘What?’ Kate didn’t know what she was talking about. Barbara smiled broadly, aware that eyes were upon them.
‘You’ve drawn Exxon, haven’t you?’ said Barbara more quietly.
Kate nodded.
‘Let’s swop,’ said Barbara.
‘Why?’
‘Because Standard Oil is a midget. We’ll look like Mutt and Jeff.’
Kate smiled. Barbara was five feet eleven inches tall, but over six feet with the heeled boots she was wearing tonight: ‘Take your shoes off,’ she suggested.
‘The only way we’ll be able to look each other in the eye will be if I take my legs off,’ said Barbara. ‘He’s a pygmy. Very nice, but very miniature. He’s like something that you keep in a matchbox.’
‘That didn’t bother you with Paramount.’
‘Paramount was pretty.’
‘Aha!’
‘He looks like a grasshopper. I’ll never gat a wink of sleep. He probably makes that funny noise that crickets make by rubbing his back legs together. Oh, God, here they come.’
Heading towards them was one of the conference organizers, a man of about sixty with a very upper-class English accent, and a rather ill-fitting dinner suit which looked as though he might have bought it some time just before the last war. His name was Colonel Flanders. He was a Civil Servant, sent up from London by the Scottish Office, to oversee the weekend, and not perhaps the most suitable of choices for the job.
On either side Flanders was flanked by two men obviously American. One was, as Barbara had described, rather small: that had to be standard Oil, thought Kate. The other, Exxon, wasn’t bad, as oil men went. He was tall and well-built and rugged in a grid football playing sort of way. If he hadn’t looked rather Neanderthal he might even have been considered good-looking.
Colonel Flanders made the introductions: ‘Well … well … well … we can’t have two lovely ladies like you standing over here gossiping by yourselves … criminal waste … let me introduce you, Mark Silberstein and Edward Cernik … I’d like you to meet some friends of mine, Barbara Bachman and Kate Sullivan.’
Flanders stopped talking while everyone smiled at everyone else, shook hands and murmured greetings. The Grasshopper and Neanderthal, thought Kate, as she tried to remember their Christian names.
‘I was just saying … good river for salmon,’ said Flanders when he realized that the introduction had not set off an instant conversation. ‘Don’t suppose either of you are much interested in fishing though …’ he beamed at the women.
Everyone laughed again. The politeness was back-breaking. Everyone knew why Flanders was there. Now that he had done his job it was up to him to make as graceful an exit as possible.
‘I used to fish for tiddlers … isn’t that what you call them in England …? When I was a little girl,’ smiled Kate. ‘I’d get them in a jar. I loved them. I always loved miniatures,’ she said, smiling broadly at Barbara.
Barbara swallowed a laugh. Flanders, his eyes transfixed on Kate, smiled back. For a moment Standard Oil, the Grass hopper, looked uncomfortable.
Suddenly Flanders remembered his job. No doubt he had other couples to introduce before dinner began: ‘Well, look, I’ll see you all later then. That all right? Jolly good. Lovely evening, isn’t it? Gets a bit nippy later on up here, so we’ll be going in soon. Right? Well perhaps I can leave these lovely ladies safely in your hands then can I, gentlemen? Jolly good …’ And still beaming and gloating he backed away, leaving the four of them stuck at the end of the terrace like a little knot of football players watching the referee leave the field.
The Grasshopper shook his head as Flanders moved back into the crowd: ‘What the hell does that guy actually do …?’ he said, more as a statement of Flanders’s apparent futility than a question.
Kate looked serious for a moment: ‘He pimps for Scotland,’ she said.
For a moment neither of the two men knew exactly what to say. Then suddenly Neanderthal Exxon broke into a huge raucous laugh, so loud that people turned towards them from all over the terrace. And taking his cue from his old friend the Grasshopper joined the good humour.
That, as it turned out, was the ice breaker. A few minutes later when they were called in to dinner, Neanderthal had one arm hung loosely, but quite proprietorially, around Kate’s back, while Barbara was feasting her little pet with an eye-level view of four-fifths of her bosom, a mischievous, grinning smile and some totally fictitious, but compelling, stories about her friendships with Robert de Niro and President Giscard d’Estaing. Barbara always liked to give her men good fantasy value, too.
Colonel Flanders sat at the head of the table for dinner. There wer
e ten other men, and thirteen women, the small surplus being due to the fact that a couple of the men had skipped off immediately after the conference to attend to their wives and oil rigs. Neanderthal wasn’t a great talker, but he did laugh a lot. Kate, as always, was polite, chatty, interested to know whatever her man wanted to tell her about his job, his home or his family, but she always kept a barrier between them. At the end of the night he, like the others, would know nothing more about her than when they had first met. But in the meantime he would have a wonderful night.
Kate looked around the table as the no-nonsense Scottish soup was followed by the inevitable grilled local salmon. She, Neanderthal, Barbara and the Grasshopper had been placed at the far end of the room, a good position for observing the other guests. Apart from one woman in her early fifties, a lady with a large bust and a regal timeless gown who, she supposed, was the wife of Colonel Flanders, the other women were the predictable mixture of over-glamorized secretaries, quickly getting drunk through nerves and too many before-dinner cocktails; and a couple of rather obvious, mascara-laden tarts who spoke in loud voices and were reared, she guessed, in Manchester and Glasgow. She had noticed them earlier in the day, hanging about the bar looking bored, drinking gin and reading the tabloid newspapers, while the secretaries had bustled about outside playing tennis and sunbathing.
Apart from Flanders, and a younger Scottish Office man with a tough spiky little red beard, a pink shiny nose and a dark check suit with unmatching lemon-striped shirt, most of the other men had the corporate look, instantly identifiable as upper management: white crisp shirts, navy blue, well-cut suits, fading tans, neat, well-brushed hair and shoulders which sat straight in their chairs displaying the confidence acquired from their multi nationals along with pension plans, school fees and company cars. They didn’t look rich: but they looked organized. The rich could be careless about clothes, language, manners: men like these couldn’t be careless about anything.
