Ambition (33 page)

‘Because he basically believes that all men are born equal and therefore no one owes anyone anything,’ she said, surprising herself with the indignation in her voice.

He looked at her nastily. ‘You’re entitled to your opinion. All I know is what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. Tax was his Rosebud in reverse what made him tick. But I
thought he’d be content just mouthing off and offending polite liberal company. The crazy bastard . . . with all his money, dodging doesn’t make a speck of difference.’

‘It was a matter of principle,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Principles? My father thinks a principle is the head of a college.’

‘You think that because you think the only principles are liberal ones.’ She reached for the phone. ‘You don’t understand him, or this world we’re living in.
I’ve got to call him.’

‘No.’ His hand covered hers stiffly. ‘If you pick up that phone, you may as well get out my Swiss army knife and cut my balls off.’

‘But—’

‘
No.
I’ve got to work this out myself, Susan.
You
got rid of Moorsom the first time;
you
had the clairvoyant killed.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘No.’ He held up a hand. ‘Don’t deny it. I know you. Just spare me the details, that’s all I ask. But
I’ve
got to do this: I’ve got to earn my
pay for once in my life. I can’t be Maxine’s little boy, or Michèle’s little boyfriend, or Susan’s little sidekick, or my father’s little son and heir forever.
And I’ll
always
be his son till I can be his saviour.’

She giggled.

‘Does that sound melodramatic?’

‘A bit. A bit like one of those biblical Bruce Springsteen songs.’

‘Hey, I
love
Bruce Springsteen. Don’t you? Say you do. I always think a marriage can go horribly wrong if the parties concerned can’t agree over Bruce
Springsteen.’

There. He’d said it. She knew he would. Once you knew how to bring out the worst in a boy, a proposal of marriage was only a scruple away. ‘I love him. But I’m wary of his
position in modern life. Isn’t Bruce Springsteen what men believe in when they stop believing in God, politics and football?’

He roared. ‘Baseball, you bitch! Susan, you slay me.’ He kissed her, holding her face between his hands. ‘Listen, I’m going to work this out. Don’t tell Dad,
OK?’

‘Don’t tell me what?’ asked Tobias Pope.

They turned to gape at him.

He raised one hand, wiggling his fingers in slow motion. ‘Hi, children. What’s this you’re not going to tell me? Never mind, it’ll keep – I’ll have it as a
nightcap. I love surprises. Come along, Susan. I’ll be in the car. And quick. You know how I hate to wait.’ He closed the door. Automatically she began to gather her things
together.

David Weiss stared at her. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I have to.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s my boss. I have to go with him.’

‘To fuck?’

‘NO!’

‘But you told me you were fucking him. Remember? You told me how much
better
than me he was.’

‘I was lying.’

‘So I’m better than him?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never slept with him. I was lying about that.’

‘You liar.’

‘I’m
not
!’

‘Then why should I believe you now?’

‘I have
never
fucked your father. Or your mother. Or your girlfriend Michèle, even though she
was
hanging there like a human buffet ready to take on all
comers.’

He slapped her.

She backed off, rubbing her cheek. ‘I’ll say it one more time. I have never fucked Tobias Pope. I was lying when I said I had. I’m not lying now.’

‘Then why are you going to him?’

‘Because . . . we have a deal.’

‘About fucking?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘So you
are
fucking him!’

‘NO!’ She screamed it.

‘Go on.’ He opened the door and pushed her out. ‘Go to him, you lying bitch. Go and do all the pair of you are good for – go and roll in the stinking mud and rot. I could
forgive you for fucking him before, when I wasn’t playing straight with you – but not now. Forget it. Don’t worry, though – I’ll save this lousy paper for both of you.
He’ll have his investment back, and you’ll have your precious little editor’s chair to come back to. But I won’t be here. I’m not working for that man any more. The
man who stole my life. The man who stole my
wife.
I’d rather lick out toilet bowls for a living.’ He came after her and pushed her skidding down the corridor. ‘Go on. Go
and make an old man happy. You can’t make anyone else happy, that’s for sure. Because you’re
evil.
You’re
evil
.’

‘You are’ screamed Maxine Weiss Pope in 1958 as she slammed the door of the master bedroom of the penthouse on Central Park West. ‘EVIL!’

‘But why?’ asked the young Tobias Pope quietly, as though reasoning with a crazy person. ‘Why, darling?’

‘Asking me to sleep with a
whore! A negro whore!’

‘But Maxine, you’re a fully paid-up member of the NAACP. What’s the problem, angel?’

‘You do not ask that thing of a women you love, Goddamnit!’

‘Then who do you ask it of? Someone you’ve got no feelings for? Isn’t that a pretty cold and exploitative thing to do, Maxine?’

‘Just go take a walk, you crazy sick bastard!’
Maxine was at the end of her tether now, he could tell; the fruity, yeasty rasp of Brooklyn had at last burst through the taut
refinement of her uptown voice with all the subtlety and relish of a cheerleader bursting through a paper drum.

‘Maxine, Maxine.’ He fell against the door, his blond face snubbed by it. ‘Oh, Maxime,’ he said drunkenly, though he hadn’t touched a drop; his wife always had
that effect on him. He pictured her leaning against the door, her fists clenched, her wrists scarred: golden-skinned, black-haired, with eyes the colour of a hot toddy. She looked like one of those
beautiful mid-western brunette WASPs who were always chosen by Hollywood to play Hebrew heroines in its best biblical epics. In her white silk peignoir, her flesh would shine with righteous
indignation; he could almost taste its colour and sheen. How he loved her.

‘Maxine, I’ve got to talk to you!’
he shouted urgently. He could see things slipping away before his eyes.

‘Just go and get a lousy whore to do those dirty things, you cheap bastard!’
she shrilled, Brooklyn triumphant.
‘I ain’t playing! Get a whore to do
it!’

He slumped against the door defeatedly. ‘But it’s no fun that way,’ he said, almost to himself.

‘Am I evil?’ Susan Street asked Tobias Pope blankly as the car slunk from EC4 to SW1.

He looked at her pure, perverse profile and laughed softly. ‘Did he say that? He didn’t mean it. He’s just jealous. It does terrible things to people.’

‘Am I, though?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know, Susan. Maybe I’m not the best judge. I can tell you this – you remind me of me. Does that answer your question?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Why? Don’t you think I’m evil?’

‘No,’ she said, surprised. ‘No, I don’t.’

In the lift at Lowndes Square she asked him, ‘What’s going on? I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you for another month.’ He noticed that she had the dazed, distracted air
that survivors walking away from car crashes often have.

‘I have to tell you something,’ he said. And he thought he could feel his heart almost burst inside him, just like in trashy books. They went into the flat and he locked the
door.

‘I came to London, and I brought you here, to tell you I love you,’ said Tobias Pope. ‘Go into the bedroom and get undressed.’

‘I’ve always thought that sex spoils a relationship,’ she said weakly.

‘That’s funny, I’ve always thought that a relationship spoils sex. Get to it.’

Stunned, she walked into the bedroom. He followed her. Out of her Alalïa, her tights, her heels. She got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

‘I have to tell you I love you, and I want to marry you,’ he said. He left the room, and when he returned he was wearing silk pyjamas beneath an old, worn dressing-gown, and carrying
a white cup.

She stared solemnly at him over the bedclothes as he sat down beside her; Miss Muffet and the spider.

He laughed. ‘Don’t look so scared, I certainly don’t intend to sleep with you before I marry you. Not now. Not now I respect you. Drink this, it will help you sleep. I just
want to tell you a story.’

‘What.’ It wasn’t even a question.

He laughed again. His new laughter made his face look very young, something which only served to accentuate how old he looked in repose. How old
he was.
‘An old, old story. Stop
me if you’ve heard it. Two stories in one – romance and redemption. Boy meets girl and finds faith – if you can call a man of fifty-five a boy or a complete monster a girl, which
I doubt. But I digress. Semantics are not romantic.’ He stood up and began to pace the room.

‘When I met you, I had neither romance nor redemption on my mind. What I had in mind was sport. I’ve found sport in you, but I’ve found more; I’ve found love, and faith
in the human spirit. To see your strength, and your faith in yourself, and your utter lack of self-loathing no matter how squalid the situation you find yourself in – for me, it’s been
an education.’

‘You make it sound like a sexual
Jeux Sans Frontières
.’ She shivered with memory.

‘Well, I didn’t think they
made
people like you any more – a rebel without a doubt. Not women, not in the West. Not now it’s closing time.’ He sat down and
searched for her hand under the covers. ‘I don’t just want you for my editor, I want you for my wife. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re crazy,’ she said slowly. But she didn’t really know any more. All she could see was the winning tape, turned to liquid gold in the sunlight of her
success; all she could feel was it breaking, like a perfect, meritocratic, wave across her body.

Again he laughed. ‘No you don’t. You think I’m fascinating. Which I am. And worse, much worse, you care for me. As I care for you. Will you marry me?’

‘I’m going to marry your son,’ she said, looking into his eyes.

He laughed sadly, shaking his head. ‘No you’re not. Not because I’m going to stop you, but because your will to survive and thrive will. That route’s not for you; you
know as well as I do that romantic love is always either a living death – those are the ones they call
happy
marriages – or a battle to the death – they’re the ones
that end in divorce. Boy meets girl, and their hormones act as a sort of magic carpet carrying them up, up and away to all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last
I’ve found you!’ He blew a loud raspberry and stuck out his tongue. ‘And then one day the young ones wake up with a crash landing and they’re yelling at each other about
whose turn it is to put the garbage out. Susan, young love is a lemming: it’s born to die. And you’re left with that resentful boredom you last experienced as a teenager living
en
famille
; why don’t you leave me alone, why don’t you understand me, why don’t you
die
? Until one day you just walk away, and as you sit on the bus finding your fare,
you count your loose change and find that you’ve spent ten whole years of your life. The only difference is that this time you did it voluntarily – and that as a teenager, you could
afford to kill time. But now, when you look in the mirror, you see time’s been killing you. You see that you’re not so unimpeachably
young
any more; too much bullshit and too
many bullshots have left stretch marks on your mind and body.’

‘I am beside myself with fear,’ she said sarcastically.

‘You will be, when you walk out on my son and you’re not SUSAN STREET in upper case any more; when you’re not upwardly nubile, just another divorced broad living on begged
alimony, borrowed time and stolen kisses. Susan, you’re too good for that.
You don’t want that
.’

‘I want your son,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Have him. On the side, as they say. Who’s stopping you? God knows, I’m a New Man . . .’

She hooted. And then she threw her arms around his neck. Like an American Fifties B-film, he was so bad he was good. How could she let him get away just for a pretty face and a big cock when he
was the only person she had ever met who didn’t make her feel like a Martian? Her head on his shoulder felt like home. She squeezed him tight.

‘I’ll make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice,’ he promised.

‘Who’s she? Your new girlfriend?’

‘Will you marry me?’ he asked patiently.

‘I think that might be a distinct possibility.’ She laughed.

‘Well, sleep on it.’ He patted the pillows. ‘Drink your milk. And let me tell you a bedtime story.’

She smiled at him indulgently. He was beaming like a boy.

‘Let me tell you about your next task. The next task is the last, isn’t that so? And then you get your heart’s desire. I want to tell you now what the last task is so that you
may prepare yourself for it. And thus relish it all the more.’

Her smile faded. Her muscles tensed. She watched him as he stood up and began to pace the room once more. The long mirrors scattered around the room threw him back at her wherever she looked,
this old man with his new love. He was everywhere. He was everything. Right now, nothing existed beyond this room. She felt reality, struggle, even ambition slip away. His words sounded like a
mantra.

‘For our last task, we’re going to Haiti. The beautiful island of Haiti, Susan – it’s received a lot of bad publicity over the last few years, most undeserved. Home of
AIDS, my foot! – why everyone knows that San Francisco is the home of AIDS. OK, so a rich American fag
can
buy a native there for the price of a piña colada – but so
what? It’s a free country. And in a free country, everything has its price. Who are we to sit in judgement? Live and let live. They’re a charming people, too; so
obliging.
Make
the Thais look like iceboxes. I, my personal self, like to watch the goings on at one particular house of joy where the girls and boys drink a punch whose base ingredient is seminal fluid –
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, darling. I’m told it’s rather like a margarita. Only thicker.’ He laughed reassuringly. ‘And the hangover’s worse.’ He
looked at her, his eyes gleaming. And he started to laugh again.