The Spoiler

by Annalena McAfee

  He bit his lower lip. This was agony for him.

  “Everyone was her lover.”

  “Does your father know about you and her?”

  “Not the full story, no. He died years ago.”

  He closed his eyes. She reached over and stroked his hand.

  “It must be hard for you. You must feel you’re betraying her in some way. But you’ve got to fight that. You’re the one who was betrayed.”

  He seemed grateful for her insight.

  “Maybe, by telling this, by putting it out there, I can start the healing process,” he said, rolling another joint.

  They lost track of time and slept where they sat or sprawled, at odd hours in brief snatches. They called room service when they were hungry or needed more drink, and the more he talked, the more aloof and distant he became. At one point, as they lay side by side on the bed, Tamara thought she had lost him altogether. It was an indelicate question, but she felt it needed to be asked.

  “You’re young and good-looking. She isn’t. How does that work?”

  “How does what work?”

  “You know. When you’re together. Alone.”

  He rolled over on his elbow, and for a moment she saw a flicker of menace in his eyes.

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  There was no diplomatic way of putting this.

  “You know …” She mimed, crooking and flexing her index finger. “How do you get it up?”

  He hit his pillow with such force that it sent up a spray of feathers.

  “Use your imagination, for fuck’s sake! Do I have to spell it out to you?”

  It was a tricky moment. She had to work to soothe him, ordering more champagne and promising (rashly, she knew) that The Sphere would throw in his air fare to Goa—if that was what he wanted—on top of the agreed fee for the story.

  “First class?”

  “First class.” He calmed down, reached for the Gideon Bible and began to cut a line of cocaine.

  “How did it start? The abuse?” she asked in a neutral tone she fancied made her sound like a counsellor.

  “How do these things usually start?”

  He was behaving like a surly teenager.

  “I don’t know. Grooming? Inappropriate touching?” she suggested.

  “Yes. Grooming,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Grooming. Inappropriate touching. The lot. She was always at it. Holding me. Pawing me. She called me her Darling Boy.”

  “And Tad, her husband? The film director? Did he know about any of this?”

  She had to strain to hear his answer.

  “He was in on it too.”

  Tamara turned to check that her Sony was still recording.

  “In what way?” she asked.

  He put down the rolled banknote, licked his index finger and dabbed at the few grains of cocaine left on the Bible. He was further away than ever from her now, lost in past traumas.

  “In every way,” he said, closing his eyes. “He liked to dress up to do it. Women’s clothes. Makeup. Wigs. High heels. The lot.”

  “Sick,” she said. “Sick bastards.”

  “That’s exactly what they were. They destroyed my past, and my future too.”

  Tamara’s first reaction, after checking her tape recorder, was to reach out and console him, but he shied away and lay curled up, unreachable in his misery, on the edge of the bed, a broken man. The burden of shame was too great. She was moved by the hopelessness of his blighted life and could still appreciate his beauty, but now that she had learned the full extent of his intimacy with Honor Tait, Tamara realised she was repelled not just by the old woman but by him, too. To make love to Dev now would be to experience a vicarious intimacy with a repugnant old woman. He was Tait’s creature.

  Tamara knew she would walk away from him once their business was done. It was important to tell this story, and she would tell it well. It was good, empowering even, to be on the side of virtue, to expose cruelty and hypocrisy. But she understood that their first night of lovemaking and its disappointing reprise in this hotel were the beginning and end of their affair.

  By Monday morning there was nothing left to say; all that remained was to set up the photographic evidence with the Sunday Sphere picture desk. Dev would emerge on the steps of Holmbrook in the company of Honor Tait at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. The photographer would be waiting outside the Gut and Bucket with his long lens and, once the pictures had been taken, would hand over an envelope containing the promised air fare in the pub. Tamara refrained from asking whether Dev would, before their unofficial photo call, offer himself to Tait for a final time.

  They began to dress, and Tamara took a furtive last look at his cock, magnificent even in repose. His face, by contrast, looked drained and spent as he walked towards her, beckoning.

  “We haven’t got much time left,” he said.

  She leaned in for a passionate final kiss, but he dodged her lips and pointed at the briefcase.

  “The cash?” he reminded her.

  It occurred to Honor, as she looked down on the bare wintry garden, that there was more warmth and life down there than up here in her flat. She felt a pang of pleasure as she turned back to the room, empty and clarifying as a tomb. She should have done this years ago.

  Here at last, undistracted, she felt ready for her final act of purging. Only now could she exhume the truth she had buried for fifty years.

  I stood and watched as the Allies formed a queue to give that young German a savage beating. In the chaos of victory, the Americans were pumped up with righteous vengefulness over the horrors they had witnessed in the newly liberated camp.

  It was a young sergeant from Idaho, a big farm boy, who finally stopped the rout. Had he been brought to his senses by the childlike whimpering of the victim? Or was he alerted by the shouts of a freed prisoner, a German speaker, who had stumbled on the scene and heard the boy’s mumbled pleas? Perhaps the sergeant was simply sickened by the blood feast. The Nazi soldier, it turned out, was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy who had never seen action. He was a prisoner himself; four days earlier he had been forced at gunpoint by retreating German officers to put on the uniform and he was drafted into a forced-labour battalion. He had been put to work digging trenches that would never be manned.

  She never knew whether the boy survived the Allied lynch mob. His limp body was stretchered away by medics, and she made no attempt to find out what happened to him. Nor did she ever write or speak, not even to Lois, of the scene she had witnessed, and of her complicity. There was, she knew, no moral equivalence here. On the spot where the soldiers had administered their freelance rough justice, 56,000 had recently died as a result of state-sanctioned murder. No, she could not blame the Americans. It was herself she could never forgive; the cold eye, the reporter’s eye as she had liked to think of it, looking on, impartially recording. “Want a turn, lady?” the GI had asked her. She had declined. But she had not flinched. She had seen herself as a truth machine. But there was something else happening, something animal, a worm of sadistic pleasure gnawing at her heart, as she watched the beating of that boy, willing it on.

  Twenty-two

  “What a sick old Doris,” said Tim, holding the photograph of Honor Tait clasping Dev’s hand on the steps of Holmbrook.

  She was hunched in concentration as she negotiated the stairs. He was staring directly into the lens with haunted eyes. In another picture they were both in profile, and she was smiling up at him with a look that could be only interpreted as possessive triumph.

  “Look at that! The love light in her eyes …” Tim was clapping with delight.

  “Come on. This is practically child abuse. It’s not funny,” Tamara said.

  “Where’s your sense of humour, girl? Just a bit of harmless fun.”

  He shuffled the remaining prints until he found the one he was looking for.

  “That’s it. The bull picture. The clincher,” he said, waving it towards Tamara.

  “Hold still.
Let me see.”

  He dropped the photograph on the desk, and Tamara blenched. It was hideous. Dev was leaning over the old woman and his hands, those delicate fingers, were gently cradling her upturned face. They were kissing. Honor Tait’s eyes were closed, caught in a moment of deep, forbidden pleasure. His eyes were shut, too, but Tamara knew that, behind his closed lids, they burned with hatred and self-disgust. The Judas kiss.

  “Blimey,” said Tim. “So that’s your latest fancy boy, Tam? And she’s your eighty-year-old love rival?”

  Tamara was too furious to reply. Still chuckling, Tim gathered the pictures into a pile, with the kiss uppermost.

  “There’s just one thing I want to know, Tam,” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “How the hell does he get it up?”

  “Oh, use your imagination, for fuck’s sake.”

  He had phoned again. At last. A farewell visit, he said. For as long as they had known each other, even in the best of days, it had been one long farewell. He arrived within the hour, looked briefly round her empty flat but made no comment. He was swift and to the point. There was no pretence on either side. Honor signed the cheque and gave it to him. They went down in the lift and walked together to the cash dispenser outside the supermarket. He kissed her twice; once with unexpected tenderness, on the steps of Holmbrook as they made their way to the shopping parade. After he pocketed the banknotes, his parting kiss was more peremptory. He hurried away, and she stood watching him fade into the distance. She knew that he would not be back. It was like watching her last sunset.

  They needed a quote from Honor Tait to complete the package, and a news desk veteran, Perry Gifford-Jones, was enlisted. A former actor in provincial rep who went on to become the sharpest rewrite man on Fleet Street, he was now a casual headline sub, occasional leader writer—Sphere Sez—and recidivist alcoholic. He was also Tim’s wife’s first cousin, and consequently The Sphere had a tolerant attitude towards his occasional lapses.

  Gifford-Jones called Honor Tait just before midnight on Friday, judging that she would be at her most unguarded and candid then, after a nightcap and just before bed. She answered after two rings.

  “Hello?” Her voice quavered expectantly.

  “Hello. Miss Tait? Miss Honor Tait?”

  Years of whisky and cigars had given his RADA-trained voice, with its camp, overenunciated Home Counties accent, an authoritative basalt rumble.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Perry Gifford-Jones, The Sunday Sphere. Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

  There was a beat of silence before she spoke.

  “Do you realise what time it is?”

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Tait. Couldn’t reach you before, news desk deadlines being what they are. I’m sure you understand.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “I’m a tremendous admirer of your work, Miss Tait,” he said, with treacly insinuation. “I just wanted to ask your advice about a story we have here at The Sunday Sphere?”

  What possible advice could she give a squalid tabloid like The Sphere? she wondered. They were unlikely to be making a foray into respectable investigative journalism, or trying their hand at serious foreign coverage.

  “We’re doing a feature on exploitation,” he continued. “Sexual exploitation. I understand you know something about that.”

  She was baffled. Was this something to do with Clemency’s puerile outfit?

  “If you want information about the Twisk charity, you should call their office at a civilised hour.”

  “No, no,” said Gifford-Jones. “It’s quite definitely you we want to speak to. You’re the expert on the subject.”

  She resisted the pull of flattery, though it occurred to her that if the millions who read The Sphere were to be made aware of these issues, that would be no bad thing. It was all very well remaining a Guardian purist, but it might be more effective to preach to the unconverted.

  “I did write about the street children of Calcutta and Rio, and the child prostitutes of Thailand,” she conceded. “I also wrote about the trafficking of children from the former Soviet Union and Africa.”

  “You know your stuff.”

  She did not like his pandering tone.

  “This was all a long time ago. I’m rather out of date.”

  “On the contrary. That’s not what I hear. You’re very up-to-the-minute, Miss Tait.”

  “I haven’t been able to travel much over the last few years. You need to try a younger hand on the subject, someone who’s done some recent groundwork.” It pained her to admit it.

  He was unfazed.

  “More recently, and closer to home, I was wondering what you thought of young men selling sex for money in West London.”

  Was he drunk?

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I really must go now.”

  “It’s a serious problem,” he insisted, “male prostitution in your neighbourhood. We’re running a story on it on Sunday.”

  She was exasperated by the man’s boneheadedness.

  “Are there any more male prostitutes in West London than in any other part of the city? Or in any equivalent district of any other capital in the world?,” she said. “In global terms it could be argued that they have more choice, and they’re certainly less exploited than the child sex workers of the Far East.”

  “Sex tourism? You know something about that, too?”

  “Yes, but as I say, I haven’t been able to travel for some years. My firsthand knowledge is limited. You’re really talking to the wrong person.” It was instinctive, this reluctance to turn down a commission, even from a paper as despicable as The Sphere. The Statesman’s rejection still stung. Who knew when the next editor would call?

  “What about the male brothels in your neighbourhood? Maida Vale, isn’t it?”

  Who was this imbecile?

  “Are there any male brothels in Maida Vale? If there are, I haven’t seen any. Look, I really don’t think I can help you.”

  He might, it occurred to her, be a crank, a loopy fan who had traced her number and caught her off guard by calling so late. She was about to put down the phone. Then came the question that sent her reeling.

  “What do you know of a man called Dev?”

  Her breath faltered, and she struggled to compose herself.

  “Miss Tait? Miss Tait? Are you there, Miss Tait?”

  “What exactly do you want?”

  “Do you deny that you know him?”

  “I may have met someone of that name. I can’t be sure.”

  “You can’t be sure? We have the photographs, Miss Tait.”

  “Photographs?”

  She could not stifle the panic in her voice.

  “You and him. Dev. Outside your flat. This week. Wednesday. After one of your assignations.”

  She took the phone from her ear and looked at it, horrified, as if the unctuous voice issued not from a seedy journalist in an office five miles across the capital, but from the device itself, croaking in her hand like a malevolent toad. Shaking, she returned the receiver to her ear.

  “What on earth are you implying?”

  “So you don’t deny that you know him? Dev?”

  She replaced the receiver, closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. Her heart was racing, and she felt dangerously lightheaded. Resting her cheek against the cool plaster, she waited for the dizziness to pass.

  She made her way into the kitchen and poured a drink. Her hands were trembling, and she saw that she had been gripping the phone so tightly there were red marks, stigmata, on her right palm. It rang again, and she recoiled. Let it ring. After several seconds it switched to the answering machine. It was him again. The man from The Sphere.

  “Just wanted to ask a few questions … We’re going to publish anyway … Just wanted to get your side of the story …”

  She froze until the machine whirred and clicked into silence again. The Sunday Sphere, that
squalid scandal sheet specialising in spite and gleeful bullying. What were they planning? What public ignominy was she about to endure? And what about him? Was he safe? Could she reach him to warn him? They had three days before the paper came out; three days before their fragile world would implode.

  Twenty-three

  The front-page headline, over the snatched photograph, a twisted parody of Doisneau’s Kiss, was in white type framed by a black box: TOY BOY LOVER SHAME OF SINATRA’S EX, 80.

  Under it, next to a close-up detail of their clasped hands—hers pitifully scrawny, his marble smooth and strong—were the words: “Telly granny’s afternoon romps with mystery hunk.”

  Over four pages inside there were photographs of Honor as a succulent young woman, sitting with Frank Sinatra at dinner and in a lively group with Marilyn Monroe outside a restaurant. There was a handtinted portrait of Bing Crosby smoking a pipe in a cable-knit sweater (the caption read “BababaBing—another Tait conquest”), although, despite an extensive search, The Sphere had been unable to find an incriminating picture, or indeed any picture at all, of Tait in Crosby’s company. But the rest of the evidence was damning enough. Tad Challis, “director of much-loved British comedies,” was photographed “sharing a joke” on set with Diana Dors, under the headline KINKY SEX GAMES: FAMOUS HUSBAND, FRIEND OF STARS, WAS SECRET TRANSVESTITE.

  In Tait’s middle years she was pictured in a perky business suit, next to Elizabeth Taylor, whose floor-length beaded gown suggested that at least one of them had misread the dress code for the event. More recent photographs showed Tait stooped and desiccated, at a West End first night on the arm of “Sexy Faraway Tree Star” Jason Kelly, at a “perverted art show” with “telly newsman Tucker,” at a “kiddies’ charity event” next to the toadying member of the shadow cabinet and, at the recent Press Awards dinner, with “top telly comic Jimmy Whipple CBE,” whose body language—one arm matily draped round Honor Tait’s shoulder, the other outstretched in a chirpy thumbs-up to the camera—now seemed grotesquely ill-judged. Tim’s picture library had done well. SECRET LOVE TRYSTS, read the headline on page three. And under a close-up picture of Dev, a firm-jawed avenging angel, was the killer quote: “She groomed me as a schoolboy. It was child abuse.”