Ambition (19 page)

‘Yes.’ Susan smiled encouragingly. She was pleased for a chance to talk to this strange creature she recognized from the covers of
Marie Claire
and
The Face
.

‘Guess where I got this?’ The Mouse heaved herself up out of the water, exposing her long ribcage, and fell back giggling and splashing. ‘ARKANSAS!’

‘Could they do me one the same?’

‘Hey, you’ve got a great shape. You’ve got a
shape
, period, which is more than I do!’ The Mouse trod water for probably the first time in her life. ‘So why
aren’t you out showing it off in one of those cute little tennis dresses? Or golfing slacks? Or playing croquet in a Chanel two-piece? Or jogging? Or doing yoga, or aerobics, or cycling, or
clay pigeon shooting? Or availing yourself of any one of the facilities we’ll have to hand over an arm and a leg for when we finally get sprung?’

‘I can’t stand physical jerks. In more ways than one.’

‘Hey, great!’ Mouse peered at Susan. ‘Are you here to lose weight?’

‘Only in the purse.’

‘I figured that. What you here for?’

‘Tired and emotional.’

‘Me too.’ The Mouse swam beside her. ‘This health stuff is a load of garbage. I never looked better than I did when I was twenty and I was taking two grams of coke a week,
smoking horse three times a day, getting four hours’ sleep a night and having the crap kicked out of me every ten days by this fantastic spade I was fucking. I swear, I’ve never looked
or felt better. But then I went crazy. Since then I’ve become versed in moderation.’ She giggled. ‘Only one gram a week!’

As a veteran, the Mouse had taken Susan under her spindly wing. They went for all-body massages – ‘Get off of my case and on to my face,’ the Mouse told a beautiful but gay
masseur when he lectured her about her spine – and to the tennis courts to sneer at the hearties – ‘Hey, baby, want to lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Cut your head off!’ Now
they had been corralled into the indoor, ozone-purified pool, where drink seemed a small concession towards keeping them quiet.

Mouse pulled the Krug’s cork with her perfect Arkansas teeth. ‘Jeez, but I’ll be glad to go home on Sunday. You too I bet. Promise you’ll call me?’

‘Of course.’

‘I swear, I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. I visualized Disneyland with enemas. Horny masseurs. Dyke sessions in the sauna. All this place has given me is a raving
case of alcoholism, on top of everything I came here to be cured of.’ She swigged hard and passed the bottle to Susan.

Susan drank. ‘You remind me of a friend of mine. Called Zero.’

‘Zero Blondell!’

‘The same.’

‘Christ! –
that
one. A man with a twat – the deadliest combination on the planet. I had a fling with her – oh, a couple of years ago. I was just coming out of
this relationship with this guy who’d only go with girls who wore Little Black Dresses and nothing else. When he promised to shower me with the perfect adornments for the LBD, I visualized a
wagonload of square-cut diamonds. But what he meant was a black eye every Friday. Said it completed the LBD like nothing else on earth. Look at Anouk Aimée in
La Dolce Vita
. Boy, do
I know how to bring out the worst in a boy . . . ’

So said Mouse. She was beautiful, clever, fun, but Susan was left cold by her pink eyes and
ennui
. She wanted to be alone for a while, and thought she might as well utilize a few of the
castle’s resources before she went home, so she stood up and, knowing the answer, said, ‘I’m going to take a sauna. Coming?’

As she had known, Mouse shook her albino crop violently. ‘Uh uh. It’s more than my job’s worth.’

‘I’ll see you in about half an hour then. Will you still be there?’

‘Sure thing.’ The Mouse reached into the pool for a second bottle. ‘In the zone called prone.’

The third sauna Susan tried was empty, and she peeled off her swimming costume and sank down on a bench with a sigh of relief. She lay down, closed her eyes and let her mind float up, up and
away like a helium balloon cut loose at last. David, Pope, the paper, especially Lejeune – she left them all behind, earthbound, gaping up at her as she melted away into the shimmering heat
like a mirage. She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

She was aware something was wrong even before she was awake: she knew in that half-conscious state that usually ends with a sharp start and waking. This time the start never
came; instead she felt herself dip idly and shallowly into consciousness, sampling it as though she was testing bath water with her elbow. She was just about to give up waking or taking a bath as a
bad job and go back to sleep when something inside her screamed: WAKE UP.

With an effort she pulled herself into a sitting position and almost fell off the bench with dizziness. It was the heat: the sauna was hotter than Rio, hotter than Sun City. The sweat on her
body had ceased to bead, and now slathered her with a greasy second skin, making her think of the stuff cross-Channel swimmers covered themselves in.

She stood up and staggered to the door, colours dancing before her in changing formations as though she had kaleidoscopes pressed to both eyes. She clutched at the door handle as if it was David
Weiss’s schlong, and tugged.

Nothing happened.

She tugged again, this time with both hands. The effort made her head feel as though it was about to implode.

Still nothing happened.

‘Help!’ she called weakly. Then louder: ‘Help!’

It was useless. The walls of the sauna were thick and sound-proofed. She sank to the floor, stunned and shaking in spite of the heat. She felt herself start to black out. She closed her eyes . .
.

‘Susan! Susan!’ The thick wooden door pushed painfully against her naked body, and a gust of what seemed like fantastically icy air hit her on the shoulder. ‘For Christ’s
sake, girl, watchoo playing at? Shit! What’s going on in there? Susan?’

‘Mouse . . .’ With a massive effort, she rolled over on to her back. The door opened a few inches wider and the skeletal Mouse slipped through the gap. Then she was in the sauna
room, crouching on her heels and shaking Susan by the shoulders.

‘Jesus, Susan! You trying to add yourself to the Marks & Spencer range of pre-cooked gourmet goodies or something? Hack Bonne Femme? Come
on
, girl – on your feet and get
out
of here!’

‘Can’t,’ she croaked.

‘Ok. Just keep still. You’re taking a free ride.’ Grabbing her by the feet, the Mouse pulled her out of the room, dropped her and looked around frantically. ‘Water.
Water. Gotta get your body temperature down. I got it! The hydropool – gotta get you in the hydropool!’ She pulled Susan down a narrow corridor and into a room blue with Italian ceramic
tiles, a sunken bath full of swirling white water in the middle of the floor. Depositing Susan by its edge, she climbed down into the pool herself and then reached out and took the half-conscious
girl in her arms, easing her into the cool water, holding her there as she floated on her back.

After a while Susan opened her eyes.

‘You OK?’ whispered Mouse, sounding scared for the first time.

‘Think so. Feel a bit sick. A bit dizzy.’

‘At least you’ve cooled down a bit. Christ, you should have seen the colour you were! Like a lobster being boiled alive. I saw one once in France. What the Sam Hill were you playing
at in there?’

‘The door wouldn’t open.’

‘Bullsheet. It opened for me, and Schwarzenegger I’m not.’

Susan cased the concave Americaine. ‘Thanks, Mouse. You saved my life.’

‘I saved your
ass
, girl. But you’d have done the same for me. Listen, you feeling better? Can you stay here alone for a minute?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re still a funny colour. But hang loose, I’m gonna go get one of the screws – they’ll know what to do. If this was the US, you could sue them puce for locking
you in that hellhole, for sure. Here, hold on to the sides – that’s it.’

‘Hurry up, won’t you?’

‘Sure thing.
Uno momento
, love-bucket.’ The Mouse slithered and skidded out of the pool room, still naked.

Susan floated on her back, hands on the sides of the hydro, her mind slowly grinding back into action. Door sstuck sometimes. That was all. Accident.

The water, which had been burbling gently, seemed to grow a little fiercer.

She must have touched a switch. She groped along the poolside to reset it.

Her hand met smooth tiles. The water began to spill over the sides of the bath as its heaving increased.

Her hand slipped from the rim of the hydropool and she felt herself being pulled down into the cold blue bubbling cauldron that the bath had suddenly become. She opened her mouth to scream, and
swallowed chlorinated water.

Her curriculum vitae flashed before her eyes:
The Beat
,
Parvenu
, the reporter’s job on the
Sunday Best
, the deputy editorship. Then she swallowed more water, and
that was all she knew.

When she awoke some dyke nurse was kneading away at her breasts as if trying for the blue ribbon at some pastry chef competition and Mouse was trying to put cocaine up her nose
through a ballpoint-pen holder.

Alarmed by both activities, she came to her senses rather more quickly than was usual, wrenched herself away sharpish and sat up, blinking around her.

‘It’s alive!’ shrieked Mouse indelicately.

‘Miss Street! You gave us quite a fright!’ scolded the nurse, who was in actuality nothing more depraved than a God-fearing Scots grandmother with no desire to see a death on the
premises.

‘Not half so much as your killer jacuzzi gave me.’ She put her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees.

‘You must have passed out,’ said Mouse, ‘and gone under. I shouldn’t have left you while you were so faint from the heat. I already told Mrs Moran about the
sauna.’

‘Yes, Miss Street – you must let us extend to you a further week, gratis, to compensate for your nasty experience,’ said the nurse, ever mindful of bad publicity.

She opened her mouth, ready to tell them how the water had suddenly seemed to turn on her. Then she thought better of it. They’d say that the heat had turned her head; that she’d
imagined it. She stood up wearily. ‘Thanks, Mrs Moran, but no thanks. I won’t be staying my full week as it is. I’ll be going back to London tomorrow.’

There was no point in staying any longer than necessary, she thought to herself as she went to her room to pack. Because, she was starting to realize, the number of miles she put between herself
and Constantine Lejeune didn’t matter. She could run, but she couldn’t hide; not from a man with a thousand eyes, and twice as many torments in store.

Matthew Stockbridge wore a blue tracksuit and an expression usually kept in a jar by the bedsides of the terminally ill. Which was, nevertheless, very suitable to the occasion.
‘We’ve got to talk about our relationship,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong, run out of patients?’ Susan quipped weakly.

‘Very funny.’ He looked at her sternly. She sat at the kitchen table in a loose, long black T-shirt, her legs bare, her dark hair piled up, with a black Winchester Filofax and a
black Harper House Dayrunner in front of her. The Filofax, bought five years ago, was going to the big brasserie in the sky; the Dayrunner had cost more than twice as much and was less than half as
common. It was also made of something she didn’t even want to think about.

But trust Doctor Death to get his caring sharing oar in. ‘What’s
this
made of?’ he said with distaste, holding it up between thumb and forefinger.

She stood up and snatched it from him. ‘How should I know? A laid-off steel worker. An unwaged minority person. A member of the Fabian Society. Or one of your fucking patients. There.
That’s the Susan you like to think you know and love, isn’t it?’ She sat down and continued copying numbers into it.

He chuckled, pleased with her performance and his own sense of superiority. ‘You’ve turned into a real little yuppie monster, haven’t you? The Filofax that ate the
world.’

She sighed and threw down her Mont Blanc. ‘Yuppie. That
has
to be the
laziest
word, used by the most bog-standard of people, since
charismatic
. You know
who’s called a yuppie these days? Anyone under fifty with their own teeth and a roof over their head on more than ten G p.a. It’s become completely meaningless, Matthew. I’m
surprised you still use it.’ She scored one, and continued with her Bs: Bracewell, Brampton, Brody, Broughton, Blondell.

‘We’ve got to talk,’ he repeated.

‘Who’s stopping you?’

‘Susan.’ He put his hand on hers, stopping her from writing. ‘We can’t talk while you’re copying out your Filofax.’

She sighed. ‘Matthew. Every evening for the next two and half weeks, I have dinner with some hack, some money man or some poncey author whose poxy book we’re thinking of bidding for
for reasons beyond my comprehension. On Sundays and Mondays I need to sleep and I can’t stand to either write or think; I do that all week. Now, my Filofax is embarrassing me to the point
where I can’t bear to get it out in public – I feel disgusting, like a flasher. I feel soiled. I see people looking at me with pity and contempt. I
have
to spend my one free
evening re-doing it. Now at this rate, I estimate that I’m free for lunch in the year 2000. Shall I book you a window then, or would you like to talk now? I
can
do two things at
once, I assure you – I spend my days doing five things at once. Why, I can probably write, talk and chew gum at the same time. What do you say?’

He stuck out his jaw – what there was of it. ‘The day I buy a Filofax, I give up.’

‘Matthew, you gave up years ago. That’s why you’re still on twenty thousand a year.’

He looked at her bitterly. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with women today?’

‘No, but I’m sitting comfortably, and I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

‘They’re turning into the sort of people men were before they got wise. They’re making all the mistakes men used to: treating the opposite sex like shit, working themselves
into the ground in pursuit of fame and fortune, completely losing sight of the spiritual side of life and the eternal values, and sacrificing everything on the altar of success.’ He stopped,
panting. ‘That’s what’s wrong with women today.’