Ambition (32 page)

‘Why?’

‘Well, there was your beloved and Bryan facing off over the desk – one step from coming to blows, I’d say. They looked round when I walked in and backed off. It was very novel
for me, coming the Grace Kelly bit from
High Noon
, I can tell you. So I stood there trying to look sort of Quakerish – not easy in a sideless dress – and then your beloved left
the room, snarling at Bryan that the way the paper was going, he wouldn’t wipe his behind – only he said “butt” – on it soon. And Bryan ran to the door and yelled
after him that he hadn’t known that Pope Junior – that’s what he called him –
did
wipe his behind: he’d thought he wore nappies, and that his father changed
them for him.’

Susan winced, thinking of David Weiss’s sensitivity concerning his father. ‘What then?’

‘Well. Bryan told me to piss off and keep my cruising out of the office. So I burst into tears.’

‘You did
what
?’

‘Oh, I cried. Being Welsh I cry very easily. And I’m very good at it. I can cry from either eye alone, and I can make the tears stop halfway down. Tears are a deadly weapon with a
certain sort of man, and that big ox O’Brien’s one of them, bless him.’

‘But why did you cry?’

‘I wanted to find out what was going on, didn’t I. So I detonated myself, as it were. A bleached blonde dyke is Threatsville – but a weeping woman isn’t. Sure enough
Bryan came over, threw his arms around me and began to sort of heave. The Aussies are very like the Welsh – I’d call it
maudlin macho.
He said he was sorry and he wasn’t
himself these days. He went on about Wagga Wagga and how he knew how hard it was to feel Different. He said he was having a difficult relationship with a sheila – no, I’m being mean, he
said woman. And he said he wasn’t happy on the
Best
any more. “As Weiss has got more confident, he’s got more opinionated,” he said, “and like all Americans
he’s serious, and he wants a serious paper. I can’t do serious, Zero, because I’m aware of what a fucking tragedy the world is. Like all sensitive people – though I’ll
cut your clit off, you little bleached twat-tickler, if you breathe a word of this to anyone – I can’t get serious, or I’ll break. I’m off as soon as I can find another
foxhole. And you will be too, Zero, if you don’t want that po-faced Yank cutting your gags.” And I quote.’ Zero sat back, looking pleased and expectant of praise.

‘I see.’ Her mind flicked back through her memory, all thumbs in its impatience, and came up with a scene just before Candida Brown’s wedding; the contained but nasty skirmish
over editorial direction in Bryan’s office when David had previously flounced off in a huff. ‘They don’t work well together, do they?’

‘Do men ever? All that stuff about women bosses is just a decoy. But it’s not just personal chemistry, bach; Bryan’s a great editor. He’s
so
good that Pope keeps
him on tap, like Red Adair, always ready to fly off and sort out some new mess. But he’s sick of being an understudy; he wants a real job. And he knows now that he’s just keeping that
seat warm for you: English, and young, and a girl. It
hurts
him.’

‘I can see that,’ said Susan slowly. ‘But he’s never mean to
me
. . .’

‘Of course he’s not – he’s an Aussie, and a pro, and a gentleman. Besides, he doesn’t blame
you
– he understands ambition. He blames
Pope
,
for fucking him about all these years. But don’t sweat it – it’s a storm in a can of Fosters.’ Zero leered. ‘So forget that. Let’s talk about the important
stuff. What do slant girls taste like?’

‘Sushi?’

‘Hello?’

‘Susan, I’ve got Joe Moorsom on the line.’

‘OK, Kathy.’

‘Hello?’

‘Hello?’

‘Susan. It’s Joe.’

‘Joe who? Joe Blow?’ She felt used (T. Pope), bored (D. Weiss) and insecure (B. O’Brien).

‘Joe Moorsom.’

‘Oh. Joe
Blowjob
.’

There was a sullen silence. Fags couldn’t even take a joke any more. Wasn’t that a perversion of nature? – fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and fags gotta take a joke?

‘Very funny. Still, you won’t be able to make funnies at my expense much longer.’

‘Why? Are you having your face done?’

‘No. But maybe you should.’

‘Oh yeah?’ His working-class, masculine smugness really brought out the worst, the
brat
, in her.

‘Oh yeah. Because I’ve got the goods, Susan. I’ve really got them now. And your little sex bomb’s been detonated good and proper. Now nothing can stop us.’ The line
went dead.

She stared at the receiver. ‘Us?’ she said stupidly. This she didn’t like
at all
; in fact, she was damned if she was going to try to handle it herself any more.
Jumping up, she bolted from her office and flung open Bryan’s door. Then she gasped.

Sitting in the editor’s chair, his Hush Puppies on the desk, was Oliver Fane – looking like the cat who not only got the canary but the entire contents of the aviary.

‘What are YOU doing here?’

‘Keeping your seat warm.’ He winked at her. ‘You can do the same for me sometime.’

She slammed the door, marched to David Weiss’s office and flung open his door without knocking. ‘What’s going on?’

‘How so?’ He didn’t look up from his papers.

‘Don’t get piss-elegant with me, you,’ she snarled. ‘Why is that meathead Fane sitting in my chair?’

‘The
editor
’s chair, Susan. He’s sitting there because my father instructed me to put him there upon hearing of the situation.’

‘Situation?’

‘Haven’t you heard?’ He laid down his New York Yankees fiber-tip pen – a pathetic affectation in a middle-class, bookish Jew, she thought – and looked at her.
‘O’Brien’s gone. No notice, no nothing. I could sue his ass within rights, but I’m glad to see the back of him. The man wanted to edit a funny paper, not a
newspaper.’

‘He was a damn good editor.’ She glared at him. ‘And your
father
told you to put
Fane
there? I don’t believe you. What about
me
?’

‘Ah. I mentioned this. Despite your low opinion of me, and mine of you, you
are
the deputy editor of this paper. I mentioned this to my father when I spoke to him. But he
didn’t seem to believe you were ready yet. “She’s got to prove herself one more time, and then she gets the gig,” he said.’ David shrugged. ‘I guess that means
you have to persuade yet another hooker to spill the beans for the benefit of the front page – either that or off another carny act. My father acts in mysterious ways, his blunders to
perform.’

Her head began to spin. She felt dazed, drunk; she staggered forward and caught hold of a chair back. Tobias Pope . . . the mystery was not why he was behaving in this way, but why she had
expected anything else of him. Officially, her side of the bargain wasn’t complete. But she had thought they were friends now . . .

Friends! Did a rattlesnake have friends? Her gullibility and disappointment overwhelmed her, and she burst into tears.

She stood there, weeping and hating this weak side of herself. Any minute she expected to hear David Weiss laugh and tell her to go and pull herself together. To talk to her as if she was a
woman.

But he didn’t. He came out from behind his desk, put his arms around her and said in a voice of sheer amazement, ‘Susan. You’re human. You’re
human.

‘I love you,’ he said grimly as he smoked his king-size cliché afterwards.

‘What?’ She sprang up in bed and knelt, staring at him, her hands on his shoulders.

‘I love you. I’m in love with you.’

She got up, wandered around the room, took her hairbrush from her bag and smoothed her hair. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s very simple. I realized that night after you left – that night you told me about . . . Michèle, and I called her. With the mirage of her purity out of the way, I
could see very clearly that I loved you. But I was scared. I’d gone overnight from loving this girl who I thought was an angel – however misguidedly – to loving this girl I
knew
was a monster. I was terrified. So when I saw you crying – I don’t know. I still think you’re sort of half-monster. But I guess you’re half-human too. All in
all, you’re either more or less than human – I can’t figure out which.’

She stood and looked at herself in the full-length mirror, then at him. ‘Both?’

‘Whatever. Who needs the love of a good woman when you can have the love of a bad one? It’s in the good woman’s nature to give love. A bad one – well.’ He patted
the bed beside him and smiled. ‘That’s the challenge. That’s the only game in town.’

She was walking on air, on cloud nine, in seventh heaven and thinking in a ceaseless stream of clichés – white wedding, happy ending – instead of the usual
headlines when she walked into the
Best
next morning. She even put her head around the editor’s door and wished Oliver a good morning and a crucial day. He gaped at her in horror and
disappointment. Damn the bitch. She wasn’t meant to bounce back like this.

When she found the message to call Caroline Malaise, she was mildly surprised. She had trouble visualizing Caroline rising before noon, let alone calling before ten. Obviously, being downwardly
mobile concentrated the mind wonderfully. She called Caroline and was persuaded by her surprisingly brisk urgency to cancel lunch with a motor-mouthed ex-model who had distinct possibilities as a
gossip columnist.

She was nevertheless surprised to find Caroline waiting when she walked into Le Caprice at ten past one. She was even more surprised to see Caroline sitting at a table for five. Two of whose
seats were occupied by Ingrid Irving and Bryan O’Brien.

She fought panic, greeted a waiter, walked over and looked at them one by one – Caroline, Ingrid, Bryan. Caroline looked at her hands, Ingrid looked back, grinning, and Bryan looked
embarrassed.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Sit down, Sue,’ said Bryan.

‘You’ll need to,’ said Ingrid, downing her Pussy-foot in one go and slamming the glass on the table triumphantly. ‘Poor baby. You got so used to picking the sweet soft
centres in the big chocolate box of life, didn’t you?’ She giggled. ‘Well, this time it looks like you’ve been well and truly left with a choice between the Montelimar and
the Praline.’

‘Who’s the extra chair for?’ Susan asked Bryan earnestly. ‘Miss Irving’s liposuctionist?’

‘No. It’s for me.’

She turned around and saw Joe Moorsom.

What followed could best be described as a
fait accompli
in four courses. Her usual numerical vertigo came on quickly, but she could still understand enough to see
that Tobias Pope, tycoon, entrepreneur and publisher, would soon be able to add convicted felon to his long roster of titles.

It was Caroline who had first heard him conspiring with his money men in the flat in Lowndes Square; it was Bryan who, after a long round of liquid lunches with Pope Communications corporation
men who felt they had been unfairly passed over for promotion, confirmed the story. It was Ingrid who had the front page ready, willing and able to roll and Joe Moorsom who was ready to ask
questions in the House about Pope’s suitability to hold a cable franchise.

The meat of the matter was a number so large that when Susan first heard it she mistook it for some phone number on a far continent, vital to the plot. When the words ‘tax evasion’
were added as a dialling code, the number suddenly looked even bigger. Big enough to spell out the end of Pope Communications’ irresistible rise; big enough even to put a big man behind
bars.

Bryan finished his narration, and they all looked at her. Their faces were proud and eager, as though waiting for praise.

‘Well,’ said Susan Street, looking down into her third empty martini glass, ‘let me first congratulate the four of you on your act. You work incredibly well together – a
seamless dream. You’re quite a bit like the Beatles, all things considered.’

‘Why’s that, Susie?’ asked Caroline curiously. Ingrid shot a daggers glance at the gentle blonde.

‘Well, there’s the pretty one –’ She looked at Caroline. ‘And the clever one –’ She looked at Bryan O’Brien. ‘And the boring one
–’ She held Joe Moorsom’s stare. ‘And the plug fucking ugly one. Who shall be nameless.’

‘I’ll push your face in, you bitch!’

‘Isn’t that a coincidence? I’d push yours in, only no one would notice the difference. Yes – between the four of you, you just about make up one whole person.
Congratulations, as I say.’ She raised her empty glass to them, mockingly.

‘Do you know what Gore Vidal calls irony?’ spat Ingrid Irving. ‘The weapon of the powerless.’

‘That wasn’t irony, you stupid bitch, it was sarcasm. Which you’d know if you ever read anything more taxing than
Horse And Hound
.’

Ingrid lunged across the table at her.

‘Ingrid, Susan!’ said Bryan urgently. ‘Stop this! We’re grown up people – we shouldn’t be behaving like this. Strewth, even I know that!’

‘Then how should we be behaving?’ Susan turned to him. ‘Excuse me, Bryan, but what exactly was the point of this? Why are you and Caroline doing this to me? I can understand
the motives of those two twisted bits of work – of course
they
hate me. It’s called envy and misogyny. But what did I ever do to either of you? Answer me that.’

It was Caroline who answered. ‘Oh Susie, I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. It’s nothing personal. It’s him we want. You’re just in the way.’

‘Think of yourself as the John Connally of journalism,’ said Joe Moorsom with an excruciatingly smug smile. ‘You’ll feel better that way.’

It was a smart line, Susan reflected as she left Le Caprice at a trot. Still, he didn’t look quite so smart with a raspberry pavlova running down his face.

‘So he did it.’ David Weiss smiled coldly and whistled slowly. ‘Ooo-eee. The crazy bastard really went and did it.’

‘You’re talking as if you knew he would.’

‘I knew he
wanted
to. Tax – it was his big thing.
Being made to do something
– only the IRS had the power. As he got richer, so fewer people could tell him
what to do. But the richer he got, the
more
they could take from him. It drove him crazy. I remember when I was a kid, these big dinners at our place in Connecticut; he’d take a
drink too many and, instead of going on about the Russian or the blacks, he’d go on about tax. It was his demon. Compulsory communism, he called it; the malignant tumour in the tender flesh
of freedom. The noose that squeezed the juice from the nation’s finest. Oh, he was a real poet when it came to tax. I remember Maxine weeping into her vichyssoise at dinners for twenty-four
people, most of them New York Jews and New England Democrats. Well, they were all loaded but they weren’t used to that kind of crazy talk; they had a sense of
noblesse oblige.
My
father didn’t.’