‘Is this where you two cuddle up?’
‘We usually cuddle up in bed.’
‘Right. So we ditch the sofa. It’s only a two-seater, they never work. And there’s not room for a three-seater. What Andrew needs is a chair. A man’s chair. Not some prissy thing, something solid, high-backed. And for you, wicker. Lloyd Loom. Nice and light.’
Then Shelagh went into the bedroom and let out a theatrical scream of disbelief.
When Andrew returned, Eugenie could see his amusement as she gave him a guided tour of his home.
‘So instead of the sofa, you’ve got what Shelagh called your play area. Your telly is no longer living on the floor. There are shelves for your TV, record player and space for all your LP’s, with room for more. The walls have been painted in what she calls pale biscuit. Shelagh mixes her paints herself. She says that way, the clients feel they’re getting something exclusive.’ Eugenie paused. ‘How was New York?’
‘I played a lot of backgammon.’
Three weeks, playing backgammon?
‘The bedroom,’ Eugenie said, letting him see what she was thinking. ‘I’m afraid Shelagh couldn’t think of anything to do with that. She did suggest a shelf above the bed, but we thought you might hit your head on it.’
‘Well hop into bed and I’ll give you your present.’
It was a glossy black handbag, from Sak’s, Fifth Avenue. From all his trips, he always brought her something. She had a bottle of L’Air du Temps, some Chanel pearl ear-rings and a hand-painted bracelet from somewhere Eugenie couldn’t pronounce.
‘I’ll leave your door key on the table,’ Eugenie said, when she had satisfied herself that the girl in New York hadn’t completely worn him out.
Andrew stretched, lazily. ‘No, hang onto it, Eugenie. It would be nice, you know, sometimes, to come back and find you here.’
‘Are you sure, Andrew?’
‘Yes. I’m sure.’
He was less certain the evening he got back from a stressful two weeks in court in Zurich. It was the sort of job Andrew dreaded. His client had been had up for fraud. His client was clearly guilty. But his client was paying the Patric Ryan Partnership a frightening amount of money to get him off.
Andrew had managed it, but not without a few urgent consultative phone calls to the man he still thought of as his boss, Patric Ryan. Now it was over, he’d come home to frightful female wailing and the overpowering scent of L’Air du Temps.
He found Eugenie in the bath, clutching a tumblerful of gin. The soap and sponge had been thrown on the floor.
‘I’ve done the most terrible thing, Andrew! It’s awful, just awful what I’ve done. I can never forgive myself, ever, ever, ever!’
Andrew dunked the sponge back in the water. He couldn’t put the soap back in the dish, because the soapdish contained an empty bottle of L’Air du Temps.
What he could do was take off his clothes and get in the scented water with her. He wrapped his legs round her and pulled her to him.
‘Now, Eugenie. What’s all this about?’
Gradually, he got the story out of her.
For lunch, she had met Glo, her old friend from the days when they had worked for the Mushroom Information Bureau and the Footwear Information Bureau. From habit, they went to the greasy spoon caff near their old office, and ordered mushroom omelette, chips and two cups of tea each. They laughed, as they always had, at the men in business suits that spoke of boardrooms, power, hiring and firing – the way these men were slurping down platefuls of runny stew and leaving all the carrots.
‘They’re not captains of industry, they’re commercial travellers,’ Glo said. ‘If they got given a company car they’d have a special hook put in to hang their jacket on.’
‘What’s up?’ Eugenie demanded, sensing that Glo was bursting to tell her something.
‘Well, you know I told you I’m doing secretarial for a dress designer?’
‘Yes?’
Glo dolloped her chips with tomato ketchup. ‘Well, her name’s Maureen Baker!’
‘So?’
‘So Maureen Baker is only designing Princess Anne’s wedding dress!’
‘Christ!’ That was news. Speculation was rife about the designer, the dress, the cake, the music, the bridesmaids, the pageboys, the whole bang shoot for the Westminster Abbey wedding of HRH Princess Anne to Lieutenant Mark Phillips.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone, Eugenie.’
‘Of course I won’t tell anyone.’
‘I mean, you work for a magazine.’
‘Yeah, but my editor wouldn’t touch a wedding, royal or not. We’re supposed to be serious, literary and political. So what’s the dress like?’
‘Eugenie, it’s so secret, even the girls doing the sewing don’t know. They all get given a piece to do. A sleeve, half the back, they don’t know what the finished dress will be like. They were speculating that there wasn’t just one team, there were two, and one was doing the real dress and the other team was doing a sort of decoy dress.’
Eugenie could hardly eat, she was so excited.
‘Glo, do you know what’s real and what isn’t?’
‘Oh yes. Even top dress designers need someone to confide in, to show off to, to have a laugh with.’
Eugenie dare not get out her notebook. Dare not scare Glo off.
‘So there must be a drawing, a design somewhere, of the real dress?’
‘Mrs Baker keeps that locked up. But what I have seen is the toile.’
‘What’s a toile?’
‘It’s a muslin version of the finished dress, fitted onto a tailor’s dummy. Princess Anne said she wasn’t having any more bloody fittings.’
Casually, Eugenie passed Glo a white paper napkin. ‘Draw it, can you? Let me see.’ She handed her friend a Biro.
She was in agonies as Glo hesitated, waving the Biro over her tea.
‘What’s the matter, Eugenie? Don’t you believe me?’
Grinning, conspiritorial, Eugenie shrugged.
Glo drew.
By the time they finished lunch, Eugenie had all the information she needed.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you, Eugenie?’
‘Of course I won’t tell anyone.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
And Eugenie walked away, aware that she would never see her friend Glo again.
She went straight to a phone box. The voice that answered her call was Australian.
‘Daily Mail Women’s Room. Becca Simon speaking.’
‘Becca, it’s Eugenie. I’ve got something big for you. Can you meet me at the Press Club in half an hour?’
‘You bet, Eug!’
They met in the Ladies’ Bar of the fusty Press Club. It was called the Ladies’ Bar because it contained a vase of artificial flowers.
Otherwise, it was furnished the same as the men’s quarters, with deep leather armchairs and a padded leather fender-seat round the ornate chimneypiece. Becca loved it, and even found the disdain of the Ladies’ Bar barman, awesomely English.
Becca said, ‘Before I forget, message from Barry. He’s got a scoop for you on Razor Burn.’
‘I thought everyone already knew everything about that guy.’
Razor Burn was the disc jockey people listened to over their breakfast. He was sentimental, unlucky in love, and wore his heart on his sleeve. Frequently, he cried, on the radio, in the mornings. Why it should be unacceptable to cry in the morning, was something no-one could explain.
‘The thing is, Barry had a drink with him one Friday. And Barry said what are you up to at the weekend, Les – that’s his real name, Les – and Barry was imagining a film premiere, a glamorous party, that sort of thing. And Razor said, Oh, I’ll do what I do every weekend. Go home tonight, take a sleeping tablet, and carry on taking them until at last it’s Monday and I can go to work. What do you think of that?’
‘I think it’s unprintable,’ Eugenie said. ‘Sad, of course, but you can’t
make the guy look like an addict. Tell Barry to stick to the gardening.’
From her bag, she took the napkin on which Glo had drawn the wedding dress. When she told Becca what it was, the Aussie was almost speechless.
‘How did you get this, Eug?’
‘Never mind. But I can give you all the details.’
‘How do I say how I know?’
‘Sources close to the Palace have revealed to me exclusively, blah, blah,blah.’
‘Jeez, Eug, you’re a sport.’
And I’ve been showing off, Eugenie thought. Showing off to a rookie reporter, the same way Maureen Baker did with Glo.
*
Andrew Millard got out of the bath. He removed the empty bottle of L’Air du Temps, replaced the soap in the dish, and wrapped a towel around himself. While Eugenie, still weeping, finished off the gin, Andrew went into the sitting room, sat in his new, enormous chair and picked up the copy of the Daily Mail which Eugenie had left.
The front page strapline read,
THAT Wedding. THE DRESS. Exclusive! See pages 4, 5 and 6.
The page 4 by-line was ‘By Becca Simon, the Mail’s Court Correspondent.’
‘Ever since the Queen’s only daughter announced her engagement to dashing Lieutenant Mark Phillips, every woman in the land has been speculating about The Dress.
Will the winter bride wear winter-white fur? Answer? No.
Will she wear a tiara? Answer? Yes.
How do I know? Because sources close to the Palace have revealed to me exclusively what even the fifteen seamstresses making the dress, do not know themselves! This is because they are each making a separate piece of the wedding gown and have no idea what the finished dress will look like. It is being made at a secret location in London and even if I told you where, you wouldn’t be able to see in because all the windows have been whitewashed.’
Andrew grinned. This last bit, he recognised, was the Mail’s attempt to deter rival hacks from the Express and Mirror.
Page 5 was dominated by an artist’s version of what Glo had drawn on the caff napkin. Becca was in full breathless spate:
‘…made of pure white silk, high necked and pin-tucked to show off her tiny waist. The shoulders and neckline are embroidered with pearls. Notice the large full sleeves, tucked at the elbow and flaring out over fine chiffon. The look, I think you will agree, is medieval and romantic, redolent of Princess Anne’s Tudor ancestors…’
Eugenie, wearing Andrew’s towelling dressing gown, came and snuggled up beside him.
‘Becca’s done a good job,’ Andrew said. ‘But you need to tell her that Princess Anne is not descended from the Tudors. In fact, her bloodline goes right back to Robert the Bruce.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m a lawyer. Lawyers pick up all sorts of useless knowledge. Over dinner one night in Zurich, I had to listen to the full, tedious story of how they get the holes in Emmental.’
‘Glo will probably get fired. And it’s all my fault!’
‘Look, what’s to stop those fifteen seamstresses getting together and making a few bob off the Daily Mail?’
‘But I’ve lost a friend.’
‘So you’ve lost a friend. You’re not a Girl Scout. These things happen.’
‘I suppose I’ve got a new friend in Becca.’
‘Actually, you haven’t. What you’ve got is a better job than her and she knows it and she’ll keep in with you because basically, she wants your job. What it means, Eugenie, what you just have to accept, is that you can’t have friends any more. I don’t have friends. Patric Ryan doesn’t have friends. When we’re younger, we all have a best friend, someone to tell our hopes and dreams to. But gradually – and I hate to say this – you stop trusting them. And quite often, they get jealous of you. Look, I know people going all the way back to my days at university. But they’re lawyers like me, and when they’re buying me a pint I know damn well they’re trying to poach my clients.’
‘It just doesn’t sound very nice.’
‘Oh grow up. Open your present.’
He had brought her, from Zurich, a short, red silk dressing gown.
She put it on.
‘I like you in red,’ he said. ‘Suits your temperament.’
She smiled, at last, and he pulled her to him.
‘Quits?’ he asked, and she knew he was remembering the night he had wept, and how, wordlessly, she had held him, all night.
‘Quits,’ she said.
Chapter Nine
‘Eugenie, are you all right?’
Her face flamed the same colour as the silk dressing gown she was pacing up and down in. It was three months since the L’Air du Temps episode. She had not, as she expected, heard from Glo. When she rang Maureen Baker’s office, she was told that Gloria had left.
‘She’s been fired,’ Eugenie wailed guiltily at Andrew. ‘I knew she would. I got her fired.’
Andrew was phlegmatic. ‘Look, it’s 1973 not 1873. Children no longer get sent up chimneys. In case you hadn’t noticed, London is heaving with young people who regard work, in the main, as fun. The capital now belongs, well and truly, to the young. And the job market’s expanded with them. You see it all the time. People chuck in one job, or get chucked, and walk straight into another one. References, giving proper notice, forget it. The one drawback is, of course, that having talked their way into the new job, they haven’t a clue how to do it, so they live in constant fear of being found out.’
Now, in the red silk robe he’d given her, for the first time since she’d known Andrew, she hadn’t been able to make love to him. It was as if the usual hot current of her sexuality had just switched itself off.
She told herself to watch it. She had competition, no doubt about that. She wouldn’t be surprised if that backgammon bird in New York hadn’t chosen the handbag at Saks. ‘Let me handle that little job for you, honey. I’ll pick out something real good for your mother.’
Andrew wouldn’t end it with a dramatic row. He’d simply not be around any more. With his job, he always had plenty of overseas excuses. And in London, the fearsome secretary, Mrs Armstrong, would cover for him.
For the first time, Eugenie felt stifled to the point of strangulation in his flat. Something was wrong with London tonight. She had sensed it in the taxi on the way here, and the cabbie had confirmed it.
‘Always the same in the run-up to Christmas. Office parties, girls legless, pub brawls. I said to the wife. Next year, we’re gettin out of it. Get off to Lanzarote.’
‘Andrew do you mind if I phone Revel?’
‘Course not. What’s up?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know!’
He said calmly, from his bed, ‘Follow your instincts. Always the best thing. Phone Revel.’
Eugenie hoped Rhoda wouldn’t pick up the phone. She had travelled down from Cambridge and she and Revel had been painting the town red at the Natural Science Museum.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Revel demanded. ‘I’ve been ringing you at home.’
‘People do go out on Saturday night, Revel. It’s quite normal.’
‘Well get that bloke off you and cut round to the Middlesex Hospital. I’ve just had Tony on the line.’
‘But he’s in the Caribbean.’
‘They do have phones out there. Anyway, there’s been an incident. Araminta was set on by a mob, outside that pub. Crocodile. A young bloke waded in, tackled the mob. Araminta was okay, got away. But the kid was badly beaten up. Chains, broken bottles, the louts had the lot. The kid was carted off to the Middlesex and he’s in a very bad way.’
‘Oh God. Is it someone Araminta knows? A boyfriend?’
‘Tony says not. The kid was so knocked out and knocked about the hospital had to go through his wallet to find out who he was. They found an old student card from the Slade. Now, pay attention, Eugenie. You go to the Middlesex and you track down Arthur Norman Carter. Insist on seeing him.’
‘Revel,’ Eugenie gripped the ph
one, her voice faint. ‘Arthur Carter is Art. I mean, he’s known as Art. I’ve never met him. But he’s my husband’s best friend.’
‘Christ. Have you got a pic of him?’
‘I think so.’ In the orange file David had left with her. She was sure David had taken some shots of Art at about the same time that he’d photographed her in Regent’s Park. God, how long ago it seemed, that sunlit day.
‘…Shock Issue,’ Revel was saying. ‘Editorial from me, This kind of mob violence doesn’t do the country or the yobs themselves any favours.’
‘But Revel, we don’t do Shock Issues. We’re supposed to be serious.’
‘Look, what Tony wants, Tony gets. He’s the one with the wallet, remember. He’s told the Middlesex to put a gag on the rest of the Press on this one, so we’ve got the beat on Fleet Street.’
‘Where’s Araminta?’
‘At home. Tony and Babs are on their way.’
‘But it’ll take ages in the yacht.’
‘For God’s sake, Eugenie. They’re flying. Private jet. Lear.’
By the time Revel had explained exactly what he wanted, Eugenie got off the phone to find Andrew dressed in a suit, snapping shut his briefcase. Eugenie outlined what had happened, but he’d already got the gist from her replies to Revel.
‘I’ve got to go to the Middlesex. I’ve got to get a pic of Art looking bloody. Revel wants it for the cover.’ Eugenie wasn’t experienced enough to understand how they could possibly rush out a Shock Issue of Stet. The magazine was all ready to go to press. The cover was supposed to be a photo of the Minister for Agriculture, in his suit, shaking hands with a gumbooted farmer in a field. The pic had been supplied, free, by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Andrew said, ‘You’re not going to the Middlesex. I am.’
‘They might not let you see him.’
‘They’ll let me see him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know the Duty Sister.’
‘There’s a rota. It might be a different Duty Sister.’
‘I know all the Duty Sisters.’ He patted his briefcase. ‘I’ve got a camera. I’ll get your pic.’
‘But it’s Saturday night! It’s nearly midnight. How do we get the film developed on Saturday night? I’ll need a transparency, a tranny. How do we-‘
In Bed with Mr. Plantagenet Page 15
