Ghosting (6 page)

Whenever he became agitated about something—a regular occurrence—it was noticeable that everyone competed to placate him. If children have tantrums, parents are generally advised to keep calm and ignore them. But Tiger's tantrums were both heeded and indulged; girls hosed him down with one gush after another as they rushed to pick up his toys and put them back in the pram. They swished their hair back and forth like curtains and drenched him with love till he calmed down. He wallowed in all this. Indeed there seemed to be a degree of self-awareness about the tantrums. “I got
hysterical
,” he would often say when recalling some incident that had upset him, his voice rising an octave or two in the recollection. And to a sober bystander his behaviour did come over as a kind of hysteria, the sort that in days gone by would have earned a woman a slap on the face and a threat to remove her womb.

In Tiger's publishing house there were many passions. People often seemed to be in a bad mood, or at least pretended to be—I was never entirely sure about what was real and what was affected. What confused me was the amount of embracing that coexisted with the girls’ rages—a fascinating sequence of aggressing and caressing. There was also a degree of unsisterly cruelty as they jostled for position and tried to curry favour with Tiger. I say “they,” for it was clear that I did not belong in this world. I was looked upon, with some justification, as one of Tiger's whims: I lived in Scotland after all, and I turned up only for editorial meetings, staying for just a few days at any one time. Even then it was clear that I was
just passing through this foreign land—I was in it, but not of it. Besides, I didn't know anyone. Not even anyone who knew anyone.

It was a strange place for me to dip into and out of, and its sheer otherness never lost its impact. At home in Scotland, there were two small children and a baby, the centre of my universe. But in the London office I never mentioned the fact that I was a mother. I was at pains to fit in, and I sensed that talk about children would not be wise. I therefore pretended to be someone else, someone I was not.

There were two others who didn't belong, at least not in the social élite, but they were both men and usually worked in a separate building. One occupied the role of chamberlain, treasurer of the household, a trusted aide-de-camp and a magician with figures. He was a cultured man, shy and sensitive, as different in character from Tiger as it was possible to be. The other was a member of the Old Guard who had access at all times to the throne. His distinctive Cockney voice was peppered with glottal stops and unaspi-rated aitches, and he always referred to Tiger as The Chairman, which had the ring of His Worshipful Highness or His Sublime Majesty, being charged with the same reverence. In days of old he would have been the chief courtier. As it was, he served as Tiger's eyes and ears, his spy-master, and though he behaved as if he were one of the gang, his loyalty to the throne was absolute. If ever anyone complained that Tiger was being unreasonable, he would listen for a while, drawing heavily on a cigarette, and then solemnly recite. “Look ‘ere, ‘e's The Chairman and wha’ ‘e says goes.”

Loyalty was in fact prized above all else. Loyalty meant, among other things, plenty of fawning at the feast and not questioning any policy decision. Some members of staff were inefficient and
occasionally unprincipled but, provided they were loyal, their jobs were usually safe. Tiger himself would sometimes say “I know she fiddles her expenses, but she's very loyal;” or perhaps, “She drives me mad—she's always talking on the telephone, but on the other hand she's very loyal.” In fact, he tolerated all manner of wild, anarchic behaviour; indeed he seemed to relish it. Tales of wayward conduct amused him and he would often exclaim, in squeals of delight, “My girls are delinquents! They are hooligans!” Once during a book launch party at an exclusive club on Pall Mall, one of Tiger's girls, something of a free spirit, was caught urinating in a wash-basin in the gents. Despite a grovelling apology to the club, a lifetime ban was imposed on the publishing house and its staff. Tiger was mortified, or affected to be. For weeks on end he would say to everyone he met, “CAN—YOU—IMAGINE?” He gave the same stress to all three words and thumped them out in turn on the table. “Peeing in the basin! She's a
complete
liability. She will
ruin
us!” But after a perfunctory rant against her character, he always finished by saying, “But, you know, I love her! She's so loyal!” Unsurprisingly, it was disloyalty—a potent and protean concept— that was the unforgivable sin.

After a while I discovered that the girls came and went with striking regularity. When I travelled to London to attend monthly editorial meetings, I would find that Cosima had been replaced by Nigella, or Sophia by Candida. There were new arrivals as well as bare survivals. And even occasional revivals, since it was not unknown for a girl to be recalled from the wilderness into which she had been so precipitately cast. Tiger alone had the power to pardon the condemned; no amount of special pleading by anyone else on behalf of the offender had any effect.

In due course Lucinda left to marry an Earl and Sabrina was put
in charge of a book club. She claimed never to have read a book— she even confessed this to the press—but it didn't seem to matter. It was enough that she had been the girlfriend of a member of the royal family. It was clear that Tiger's appointments policy was full of purpose and intent, and I soon began to notice interesting patterns in the hiring, and also in the firing, a rare but always dramatic occurrence. On these occasions, reason was set aside while emotion did its dirty work. No one understood the specific trigger, but the reaction was extreme. Knives would be sharpened, and over the next day or two the girl in question, often quite oblivious of the offence she was alleged to have committed, would be branded and traduced. Tiger put energy into umbrage; his pique was majestic. And when his pique finally peaked, the most faithful member of the Old Guard would be called upon to do the necessary. Tiger himself was unable to face it.

Every so often he got a gleam in his eye, and we knew that he had fallen in love. Again. It was always a
coup de foudre
followed by complete infatuation. It had the energy of a natural phenomenon—a typhoon maybe, or a freak storm. Single orchids would be sent to the chosen one and French perfume would arrive by special courier. At these times Tiger behaved like a little puppy, rolling over on his back, paws in the air, simpering and slavering, hoping that his tummy might be tickled. Just like the rest of us, this mighty potentate could be made ridiculous by love. The girl so beloved would be designated
La Favorita
—a recognised position at the imperial court—and a job would usually be found for her in public relations. In the days that followed she would dine at the best restaurants and occupy a box at the Royal Opera House. Previous holders of the position would drop down in the pecking order, and for a while there would be furious spitting and pouting.
Being
La Favorita,
however, was generally a short-lived affair. Though the after-tremors could be felt for some time, Tiger fell in and out of love quickly and decisively.

Now and then I sat at my desk on the top floor of the publishing house and listened to the complex sounds coming from the rest of the building. Telephones rang, kettles boiled, hairdryers wheezed. And some people didn't just talk, they squawked. They spoke, as it were, in italics, so that perfectly ordinary sentences were brought into prominent relief. Something as simple as “What are you doing?” was invariably “What
are
you
doing?”
—which gave normal dialogue a theatrical quality. They also spoke in shrill absolutes, so that someone was a
total darling
or a
complete noodle.
They said
grotty
and
golly,
they complained of a
frightful
pong, and they were never just angry, but always
absolutely livid.
The way they expressed themselves seemed every bit as significant as what they were speaking about; in some strange sense it was indistinguishable from it.

Of course, a lot of time was spent on the telephone, which was used just as much for making social arrangements as for conducting business. The collective sounds of Tiger's girls on the phone to their friends were not so very different from the whooping at a children's party. It seemed that if you were out of the top drawer you did a lot of shrieking. At closer range it was possible to make out the words, the discussion of menus and venues, of the night before and the night to come. And always of what was worn and what to wear. But the language was alien, brimming with chummi-ness, and there seemed to be no way in for those not born to it. You can come to imitate the way someone speaks, but you cannot take the substance as your own. Theirs wasn't a private language exactly, more a system of communication that naturally excluded.
The vowels were particularly distinctive, springing from a place way down the larynx and travelling up fine, swan-like necks before emerging in beautifully modulated tone patterns. The Scots have short, stunted vowels, cut off in their prime, strangled humanely before they get too long and above themselves. They sprout from pinched throats and squat necks. Of course, this is to speak generally, for there are longer shorts in Kirkwall, say, than in Kirkcaldy. Even so, vowels can never be underestimated—they are basic in forming, and sometimes impeding, social contracts. Mercifully, human beings need very little to be able to understand each other's way of speaking—just a few sounds strung together in a sentence or two are usually enough to get the gist. But there is so much to distinguish one kind of speech from another, to separate us one from the other. There's nothing quite like language for coming between us.

I had been puzzled by language from an early age. When I was five years old my mother told me I was to have elocution lessons.

“What's elocution?” I asked, but all she would say was that it was to help me
get on.

“Get on what?”

“Just get on,” she said, squelching the possibility of more questions.

I asked my friends if they knew what it was, but none of them did. My brother's friends were three years older, and one of them claimed to know. “It's whaur they learn ye tae speak proper,” he said in his broad Fife accent, and he gave a sort of snigger. I could not imagine such a place.

The lessons were to be on Tuesdays after school. They would take place in Dunfermline, an eight-mile bus journey away. While I was having the lesson, my mother would do some shopping. “Elocution costs a lot,” she said, “so make sure you listen and learn.” When the day arrived, I was excited about going on the blue double-decker bus and even risked asking if we could sit upstairs, though I knew it wouldn't be allowed. Every few hundred yards the bus stopped to let on women with large string-bags bulging with groceries. It was raining outside, which made the air inside heavy. It smelled of wet wool and raw mince. I soon began to feel unwell. I watched the condensation trickling down the windowpanes, zigzagging whenever the bus lurched. It was difficult to breathe, and for some reason I had to keep swallowing. When the vomit darted up from my tummy like a lizard, the bus conductor pressed the bell three times to make the driver stop. Everyone stared, and out on the pavement my mother told me she was black affronted, which I knew was one of the worst things a mother could be on account of her children.

Miss Menzies, my elocution teacher, was stiff and corseted. She had a breathy, hot-potato voice and told me her name was pronounced Ming-is. I must never make the mistake of pronouncing it Men-zeez, she said—only people who didn't know any better did that. I thought at first that her legs were bandaged on account of her thick stockings and swollen ankles. Poor Miss Ming-is, I thought. But it didn't last.

On the wall there was a chart with a diagram of half a human body, the top half. On either side of the chest there were two red shapes that looked like huge mutton chops. According to the chart, these were lungs, and they were surrounded by a mass of tubes and pouches, all connected to one another. Miss Menzies took a long
wooden pointer and picked out the parts I was to learn: ribcage, thorax, diaphragm, and something called the bronchial tree. She said the names while tapping with the pointer, and I was to repeat them after her. This was not at all what I had thought elocution might be. “Never forget,” Miss Menzies warned,
“sound
conquers
sight.
” As she said this, she pointed first to her mouth, then to her eyes, but what she meant by it I had no idea. The diaphragm looked like the round top of a hill, and there was a sort of volcano underneath. This was to show, said Miss Menzies, how the breath was drawn into the lungs. She said that everything was capable of expanding and contracting, even the thorax—a truly alarming piece of information. Then there was the larynx, a hollow passage that led to the lungs, and the pharynx—a black cave behind the pink wiggly bit dangling at the back of the throat.