Full of Money (8 page)

Over the past couple of days, Esther had read Tasker's notes five or six times, but whenever she reached this point in them – the decision to go and confront Volvo woman – she felt startled by the bland stupidity of it, wanted to groan. In fact, the first time she read it, she
did
gulp and groan in disbelief. Oh God, this ludicrous impulse in reporters to unearth, to discover. They behaved as if they had (1) a licence and, above all, (2) a duty, to go barging into any closed, perilous area that interested them and ask their manic questions. ‘This could be important stuff.' The cheerful idiocy of it! It could also be lethal stuff. Perhaps it
had
been lethal stuff. The registration was held by Happy Gardening Solutions. Did the fact that Volvo woman
was
a woman make him discount the dangers? Did Dean Feston anticipate Tasker would discount the danger if Feston sent a woman?

Not much of use to Tasker, Esther thought. Perhaps to others though. She decided she'd better get home now and share
A Week in Review
with Gerald. She could look at the interrogation transcripts tomorrow – re-look.

Six

Oh, but wasn't this something? Alone in the hospitality room now, Sacheverell Biggs gloried. He watched
A Week in Review
on the big monitor and felt like a kingmaker. Or, actually, queenmaker. Either way, not just a waiter. More than catering. Look, yes, look at the Sandine woman! He, Sacheverell, had fixed her up with the astonishing, vivid sparkle she gave the programme, and the inspiring confidence, wit and energy. He and the Glenlivet. And especially the almost disallowed
bonus
Glenlivet. The
crux
Glenlivet.

In addition to the sparkle, confidence, wit and energy, note the sex. Oh, yes! Like a sweetly flung lariat noose, it dropped irresistibly and extremely unresisted on Rupe. Sacheverell wouldn't claim to have started all that up from nothing with the whisky. He'd admit she seemed this way as soon as she arrived in Hospitality. And after a while, it had turned very precisely towards Rupe Bale. Perhaps she was permanently this way. Perhaps she'd always find a Rupe Bale. But, now, her on-screen display made the hospitality suite behaviour seem half cock, so to speak. And Sachev felt entitled to think the drinks helped her campaign, made her bolder –
even
bolder. Oh, yes.

For a second, while savouring this marvellous, blatant screen steaminess, Sachev did suffer a moment of worry on Rupe's account. If he already had a love life, somebody watching this show might now be feeling foam-at-the-mouth jealous and very, very fucking vengeful. Hadn't Sachev heard a kitchen whisper that Bale was seriously romancing the daughter of a big crook on the Whitsun estate? No, not
a
big crook, but Adrian Pellotte himself, known of everywhere, far beyond Whitsun? The biggest. God, dicey. However, Rupert, a gifted, surviving star of TV and radio, must have enough sense to know the risks around this kind of Sandine situation, mustn't he? Mustn't he?

At home, Gerald, in front of the screen, said: ‘Look at Bale. This is courage, Est.'

‘In which respect?'

‘I mentioned him to you. He's discussed by people in my group – knocking off Pellotte's daughter.'

‘You were afraid the stress would upset his chairmanship.'

‘He has triumphed over such stress. This is what I mean by courage.'

‘Courageous to have a relationship with Pellotte's daughter?'

‘Courageous to behave the way he is behaving with this other piece. He will follow his instincts, dauntless, unconstrained. He is the true artist. As you'd expect, I know, I wish to be associated with someone of such strong selfhood and integrity. I'll be honoured to join this programme.'

The panel were discussing a play,
On the Frontier
.

‘This woman might not be included next time,' Esther said.

‘It's not to do with the woman.'

‘No?'

‘It's to do with him – with robustness of his spirit, the elegance of his spirit.'

‘Perhaps it will get up Pellotte's nose.'

‘Of course it will get up Pellotte's nose. It is the function of the artist to get up people's noses when necessary.'

‘Bale might be punished.'

‘Of course he might be punished. It is the role of the artist to suffer for his beliefs and impulses.'

Once they'd all gone off to the studio, Sacheverell always gave the hospitality suite a quick clear-up for when they returned, and then settled down before the screen in an armchair, with a coffee from the machine. Although the programme lasted only forty minutes, they had to do voice levels and so on before the actual broadcast began, and remained away for an hour and a half. Generally, Sacheverell would watch soccer or cookery until
A Week in Review
's start time, switch to that for, say, ten minutes, then go back to soccer or cookery. Or anything but
A.W.I.R
.

The point was, these panellists, and Rupe Bale, and Larry Edgehill and Tom Marland, sincerely, even fervently, thought their programme mattered, and Sacheverell considered he should give it a bit of a glimpse, out of . . . well, politeness. He aimed to have a small but sincere, admiring smile of congratulations in place when the team reappeared after the broadcast in Hospitality for their second stage bevies and reciprocal smarming, and he believed it would be disgustingly false if, in fact, he had seen no fragment of the show. Of course, nobody among this crew present tonight would ask him what he thought of the programme. In their eyes, he was still and only the bottles bloke. They did not go along with Priscilla Sandine's splendid, demented theory on the importance of waiters.

Invariably, he switched back to
A.W.I.R.
from one of the other channels a couple of minutes pre end. If there had been any serious mishap during the forty minutes, such as someone throwing up or dying from a heart attack, he reckoned he would be able to sense it from the final sequence, no matter how cleverly Tom Marland might manage the cameras to avoid anything unsightly. Suppose Biggs were ignorant of the catastrophe because he'd watched a different channel, it would be an unforgivable error to greet them on return with his standard smile of congratulation for their studio brilliance. They'd realize he'd missed not just the vomiting or death but the whole show. This could be damn hurtful.

In any case, tonight, once he saw how Priscilla Sandine immediately steam-heated the programme, he did not
want
to move on. She was as good as soccer, better than TV cookery. And, the truly marvellous thing – she made Rupert, in the chair, seem great and fully human, also. It mattered. Sach knew that one or two press critics had given him a mighty pounding lately. Sacheverell resented this. Surely, it should be recognized that Rupe kept the studio verbiage flowing pretty well, and managed to look fascinated by what panellists said, although mostly frog spawn.

They had been to see the West End revival of a play that originally came out just before the Second World War,
On the Frontier
, and Sach wondered whether Rupe and Priscilla had sat together in the stalls and possibly established a special closeness. This might explain the screen zing now, flesh-to-flesh intensity, like Taylor and Burton in
Cleopatra
.

Sach thought Rupe Bale's job was to be the connection for this culture show with ordinary folk. Larry Edgehill, and those above him in N.D.L.tv, hoped a scattering of average viewers glimpsed the programme for long enough to note Rupe, and decide that, if
he
ran the thing, it couldn't be above
any
fucker's head. But Sacheverell knew that, despite this good gift, Rupe generally displayed what Sach called no fizz, a catering term for dud champagne.

Now, Sandine magnificently altered this. And, tonight, Sach stayed with
A Week in Review.
Horny: they both came over horny – dangerously horny for Rupe. Suddenly, he sounded strong, cheerful, in command. Aroused? Sacheverell decided Rupe
must
have been banging her already, or must be about to, after the show, if the pair could wait. Yes, ‘dangerous' was the word.

Gerald said: ‘A chairman like Bale would entice the absolute best from me. I am someone who needs a foil, a Boswell. Bale could be it. I'm going to get in touch with Edgehill, the producer, and say I'm available.'

‘Are you sure Bale's brilliance tonight isn't entirely thanks to Sandine?'

‘Bale would sense immediately what I, uniquely, can offer the programme, and he would have the skill to draw it forth. I don't wish to sound arrogant, Esther. I don't say I can bring
everything
required for such a show, but I can bring
something
, and that something is special to me, is unmistakably Gerald Davidson.'

Another ritual on these nights when
A Week in Review
went on air was that Flo Tait, N.D.L.tv's Head of Programmes and a main board member, rang at the end of the show from home, or wherever she might be, to give Larry Edgehill her verdict. For democratic reasons, Flo liked to be called Flo, never Florence, never Mrs Tait. N.D.L.tv went in for first names. After the programme, she would come through on the wall phone just behind Sacheverell's bottle table, and he often took the call first. She was suspicious of mobiles.

Although people in the hospitality parties never asked Sacheverell what he thought of the programme, Flo sometimes would – sort of
vox
pop
him. More democracy. And a management ploy. Tonight, the phone went off while the show's final credits had only just started rolling, and nobody from the studio was yet back at hospitality. He left his chair and answered.

‘That you, Sacheverell?'

‘Hi, Flo.'

‘Did you see it?'

‘
Did
I?'

‘Fantastic?'

‘No other word,' Sacheverell said.

‘Well, yes,
one
other.'

‘Which?'

‘Voracious.'

‘Oh.'

‘For each other. Those two! Rupert, Sandine – the making of the show.'

‘I wouldn't argue.'

‘They gleamed on-screen. Near-porn. And yet depth, too. Terrific on Vagrain's novel,
The Insignia of Postponement
. Jointly terrific.'

‘Right.'

‘Pinpointing the shifting symbolism of the old-fashioned diving suit and the lead boots,' she said. ‘Captivating and thrilling viewers. People will long to read the book.'

‘Well, yes.'

‘Ever seen anything like it – short of Taylor and Burton?'

‘I thought the same, Flo.'

‘Rapport.'

‘That exactly, Flo.'

‘I suppose Rupe's shagging it?'

‘This is something I—'

‘If not yet, soon. Like tonight.'

‘Here's Larry now,' Sacheverell replied. ‘I must get around with the drinks, Flo. After a session like that they'll be so dry.' He handed Larry the phone. The rest of the studio contingent filled the room. Sach gave them a richer smile than usual. Most people headed for the bar-table. At this stage, Sacheverell stayed behind it to serve. He'd move around with top-ups later. He could hear Larry's part of the conversation.

‘Yes, I thought it went quite nicely, Flo . . . Thanks . . . Well, thanks. I'll tell them . . . Just somehow they seemed to hit it off . . . An affinity . . . Yes, . . . Yes, powerful, tangible . . . Sorry, Flo, I missed that. Is he . . .? Oh, I get you. I wouldn't know . . . But it's not really something I can ask either of them, is it? . . . Like in
Cleopatra
, you mean? . . . Oh, a lot of noise here. People all around now. It's awkward . . . Well,
he's
on a contract, of course. Probably six months.
She
– this was a one-off for her. A trial, really . . . Oh, I agree . . . A natural . . . Sorry . . . Did I hear that right? A totally new series for just the two of them?
Did
I hear that right? . . . You propose it? . . . Rex Ince and Selina will be cross. They've been nagging me to do something like that for
them
 . . . I agree, Rupert and Sandine are probably better . . . It's the din here – I didn't get that . . . Drink? Oh, she had just a couple of looseners . . . Glenlivet, I think . . . Sach and I try to keep it to exactly the right level . . . An art . . . If it's too much, panellists are liable to start talking out of their backsides . . . What was that? . . . Oh,
in
vino
veritarsehole
. Right. Well, yes, they'd have met at the gallery and the theatre for
On the Frontier
 . . . Possibly . . . No, I don't remember who sat with whom at the theatre. Yes, they might have, I suppose, if only to relieve the dreariness of the play . . . Sort of cinema back-row, you mean? . . . Tom realized at once how watchable they were in the show tonight and gave them plenty of camera . . . I'll tell him, yes. He'll be very pleased.'