Ambition (25 page)

Finally it reached gestation, and David gave a blood-curdling scream. ‘You WHAT? You were LONELY? Christ, you BITCH! You CUNT! You! DYKE! I TRUSTED YOU, YOU, YOU BITCH! HOW COULD YOU DO
THIS TO ME?’ He slammed down the phone and stared at Susan, breathing heavily. Finally he said, ‘It’s true.’

She nodded happily. ‘I told you.’ She went towards him. He held out his hands, palms towards her. He didn’t look angry or violent any more, but he did look repelled.
‘Keep away from me.’

‘What?’

‘Keep away from me and get dressed and get out of here. You have completely eviscerated the admittedly shaky foundations that my life has been built on for as long as I can remember. It
may not have been perfect, but it was all I had to call my own, the only thing that didn’t belong to my father. Now it’s all gone, thanks to you. Get out! And tomorrow, in the office,
and forever, don’t speak to me. I never want to speak to you again.’

He collapsed on the sofa and began to cry.

‘I thought I told you I never wanted to speak to you again,’ said Moorsom in the House of Commons tearoom the next day when Susan flung down between them on the
table like a gauntlet a copy of
The Face
, bearing a cover photograph of Rupert Grey peeping flirtatiously over the top of red framed, heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses and sucking milkshake
foam from the end of a pink candy-striped straw.

‘I know the girl who did the shoot,’ Susan said casually. ‘You wouldn’t believe what he got up to with that straw later. Well . . . maybe
you
would.’

Joe Moorsom looked at the magazine the way a man on a kill-or-cure diet looks at a cream cake. Then he picked it up and thrust it into her bag ‘So?’

‘Do you know how Rupert made it big, Joe?’

‘I imagine he opened his mouth for someone influential,’ Moorsom sneered. ‘That’s what they all do, isn’t it?’

‘You’re all in showbusiness, Joe. You open
your
mouth to advance yourself and so do these poor starlets. But with Rupert here, it was only a
promise
to open his
mouth. A promise to me, if I could get him where he wanted to be. So I introduced him to a friend of mine, who Svengalied him. Geddit?’

‘Very clever. I imagine he’s very grateful to you.’

‘I’ll say.’

Moorsom looked at her resentfully. ‘It looks like I’ve landed on Mayfair and you’ve got the set.’

‘That’s about the sum of it.’ She could feel internally what the cliche meant about your heart soaring. ‘Rupert has agreed formally to speak exclusively to the
Sunday
Best
about your statutory rape of him.’ Moorsom winced. ‘
If
you don’t give me a guarantee that you’ll stop asking questions.’

‘I see.’ He looked at his hands. He thought how disgusting they looked; soft, clean, pink. His mother’s hands had looked more masculine, more calloused than his. He wished he
had become a miner and never left his village. He wished he was dead. ‘How do I know that the little whore won’t go off and tell another paper anyway?’

‘He won’t. He’s not the brightest boy on earth, and he’s still quite concerned about the fact that he tried to blackmail you. Remember that scare I threw into him for
you? It stuck. This is just part of a bargain between us.’

‘I see.’ He was playing with his teaspoon and for time. ‘What if I stand my ground?’

‘That’s up to you, Joe. If you want your union, your wife, your children, your constituents and your party to know that you, Joe Moorsom, champion of children’s rights, are the
ex-sugar daddy of Rupee, the sensational seventeen-year-old singing sexpot sissy, you’re in luck.’ She sipped her tea. ‘If you don’t – well, like you say, Joe,
you’ve landed on Mayfair and I’ve got the set.
And
hotels.’ She couldn’t help smirking. ‘Stand your ground this time, Joe, and you’re very likely to be
wiped off the board.’

Question Time
came and went that week, and Joe Moorsom’s usual denunciation of the Pope empire was conspicuous by its absence. In her office, Bryan O’Brien
looked at her calculatingly. ‘You did well Sue. You did do this, didn’t you?’

‘I cannot lie, Bryan.’

‘I doubt that.’

Susan swirled the Czech & Speake bath oil in her Delafon bath and settled back with a bar of their state-of-the-art grey soap. She looked around at her Zehnder radiator,
Schneider cabinets, Cerabati tiles and White House towels and sighed. Her bathroom was the one room of the house in which she felt at home; probably because Matthew never used it, having his own
downstairs. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, she thought, a career girl’s bathroom is her refuge.

Through the double-locked door she could hear Matthew moaning on about the state of the fridge, his favourite conversation piece these days. It was now used so little she had taken to keeping
her cosmetic lotions in it, making them refreshingly cool on the face, head and body. Matthew had just come across the Camilla Hepper watercress deodorant, lettuce moisturizer and avocado face
cream, and the Body Shop banana conditioner, strawberry body shampoo and pineapple facewash. He had tried to eat the facewash for breakfast, thinking it was yoghurt that Susan had put there in a
rare fit of culinary nurturing, and was none too pleased. ‘It’s bloody typical,’ he was shouting.

She put her fingers in her ears and slid under the water. The house vibrated with the slamming of the front door and she came up for air. She thought again how lazy it was of her to stay with
Matthew when she had so little time for either his triumphs or his problems. But she didn’t want to live alone; there was something horribly Seventies about it, unless you were a gorgeous
dyke with a fan club of lovers. It wasn’t swinging for a heterosexual to be single any more; once you got past twenty-five and were still unattached, you didn’t look glamorous –
but as though you’d been sexually tried and rejected by a generation, as Guy Bellamy said. She needed a man around to change fuses and plugs (she still wasn’t sure what the difference
was, or even if there was one) and to take out the rubbish. What on earth was the point in feminism if you still had to take out the garbage at the end of the day?

A subtle buzzing disturbed her thoughts. It was coming from the Schneider cabinet, which she had left ajar, and it sounded like her battery-operated toothbrush. But how could it turn itself on .
. . ?

As if to give her a clue, the toothbrush bounced down from the shelf and hung twinkle-toed in the air.

‘Lejeune!’ she screamed.

Like a dog hearings its master whistle, the brush bore down on her and dive-bombed into the bath. She screamed. It rose up, dripping, and dived again, landing between her knees. She felt it
wriggling upwards, and grabbed it with both hands, It was surprisingly strong. Holding on to it firmly she jumped from the bath, shoved it into the toilet and closed the lid. She sat on it until
the buzzing stopped. Then she ran for the door, unlocked it, slammed it and double-locked it from the outside. Then she collapsed on the bed, laughing hysterically. Assault by a sex-crazed
toothbrush! At least Lejeune had a sense of humour.

Which was more than you could say for David Weiss. Ever since she had told him the one about the flying dyke and the birthmark, he hadn’t said a word to her. Which is why
she was so shocked when he came into her room that day, closed her door and leaned against it.

‘David!’ She jumped up from her desk. Half in surprise and half, she had to admit, to give him the full benefit of what she was wearing: a beautifully cut, witheringly conservative
Nicole Farhi houndstooth skirt topped with a shocking off-the-shoulder black leather jacket by Karen Boyd. The combination of rebel and executive was completely original and, she thought,
irresistible.

He looked at her, and she was pleased to see his throat move with agitation. But he didn’t come closer and his voice was cool. ‘I’m sorry to have to bother you, but I’ve
heard some news which I think might affect your future with this paper. And as managing director, it would be petty of me to keep it from you just because of our personal differences. You’ve
done a lot to make this newspaper into the success it is today, more than anyone now that Charles Anstey’s dead.’

She didn’t like this; it was too respectful. It was already sounding like an obituary. She sat down. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s going to be a rather embarrassing story about you in the
Commentator
some time over the next couple of months.’

‘Really?’ So here it was.

‘They’re in the last stages of putting together a series called “While The Cat’s Away: Public Virtue And Private Vice”. It’s going to be about how half a
dozen public figures with an interest in morality, or who are used as an example to others, comport themselves after hours. They’ve been following a politician, a bishop, a senior civil
servant, a minor member of royalty, a marriage guidance counsellor and a muck-raking journalist. I’m afraid that journalist is you.’

‘What have they been doing, employing detectives?’

‘Something like that. Some regular guy to do the legwork. A few photographs taken with a hidden camera. And they’ve got Constantine Lejeune.’

She brazened it out. ‘That’s a little end-of-the-pier for the high and mighty
Commentator
, isn’t it?

‘I guess they’re trying to be a newszine, like all of us. Anyway, it’s going to be in their new supplement. You’ve got to admit, it’s a very daring and clever idea.
And the inclusion of the MP and the civil servant do give it a certain subversive clout.’

‘Oh yes, it’s a fucking brilliant idea,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Why don’t we trail it for them on our front page? We don’t want anyone to miss it.’
She examined her nails. They lay on her desk still in their little plastic container. ‘I hope their lawyers are ready, willing and able. Because they’re certainly going to get sued
puce.’

David shrugged. ‘Whatever you think of that guy Lejeune’s shtick, there’s no denying he found those bodies. People trust him. He’s obviously got a gift of some
sort.’

‘Yes, for self-publicity.’ But she didn’t believe it. She knew there was more to Lejeune than clever PR.

‘I hear they’re pretty confident. Challenging this sort of thing can often be very unwise unless you’re one hundred per cent in the clear. And who is, these days?’

She sighed. ‘David, spare me another lecture on the decline of the West. PLEASE.’

His jaw tightened. ‘I wouldn’t waste my breath. But I think you should know that challenging something like this is a tricky business and only one outcome is sure: that you’ll
attract ten times as much publicity to what they say than if you ignore it.’

She tried to be patient. ‘David, if I don’t deny this, I’m saying it’s true. And if it’s true, how can your father give me the editor’s job and hope to get
that fucking cable franchise he wants so much?’

‘What are you scared they’ve got on you, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I’m sure everyone knows that you’re a complete and total slut by now. Word travels
fast, Susan.’

‘Thanks.’ What am I so scared they’ve got on me? That I killed my last boss. That’s I’m whoring for my present boss, who has had me tattooed with the word SOLD, and
that I’ve sucked and fucked with men and women, black, white and
café au lait
, on two continents. And that’s just the story so far. ‘I’m not scared
they’ve got anything on me,’ she said defiantly.

He snorted. ‘I doubt that.’

‘Why me?’ she burst out. ‘I’m not even a journalist. I’m an editor.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess you qualify because of that story you did on Lejeune.’

‘That wasn’t a story! That was an “As Told To”!’ It was a wail.

‘Well, don’t bother telling me. I guess you just tangled with the wrong guy.’ He smiled nastily. ‘I’m sure you can defend yourself. That’s a great bunch of
claws you’ve got there. Though if they’ve got anything too hot on you, I think you’re right about the editorship. But then, if
he’s
implicated in your little
extra-curricular romps too, I doubt if he’ll stay in this country at all with such a blot on his copybook. He’ll sell up and go into cable and satellite somewhere else. None of us will
have jobs here then – it won’t just be you.’

She couldn’t resist it. ‘And what will you do next, David? Go and get a cushy gig with Levin Brothers?’

He gave her a look that made her shiver with lust. ‘That’s all over, as if you didn’t know.’

‘So you need a fuck?’ She got up and in a flash was out of her houndstooth skirt and her Keturah Brown black lace underpants. She leaned against the wall in her silk stockings, silk
suspender belt, black heels and black leather, sticking out her pubis.

‘You disgust me,’ he said quietly, going out and leaving the door wide open.

She got back into her lower clothes hastily, but not fast enough to prevent Max Sadkin from seeing a sight which quickly replaced Serena Soixante-Neuf as the main feature of his sweetest dreams.
She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands, dizzy with desire and worry. Lejeune on the warpath, and she was still thinking about sex. She didn’t know what had got into her.

If only it had been David Weiss.

Susan lay on her stomach on the living-room floor wearing a cotton nightshirt, waiting for Rupert Grey’s return appearance on the
Jack Black Show
and eating a
Pot Noodle with her eyes closed in delight. After the years of designer cuisine which had been her exclusive diet, supplemented with Marks & Spencer’s sublime sandwiches, the Pot Noodle
tasted impossibly exotic and wholesome.

Matthew said he was having an affair, but she knew he was really just working late, as usual. Fancy trying to make her jealous! As if you could be sexually jealous of your teddy bear . . .

Jack was going through his usual lame routine with the sound down: raising an eyebrow, parading jokes so old they should have a preservation notice slapped on them and cracking up his audience
with monotonous regularity. They loved him passionately and Susan thought that it might be his very banality which endeared him to people. She’d noticed this in many entertainers and
immediately began to think in headlines – CALL OF THE MILD. By Sean Macauley.