Gimme More (25 page)

Pudgy creepo, Alec thought as he left the room, four-eyed twat. Why did the wrinkly fat twats get the good jobs? Why did being a pompous prat get you the sharpest office? Everyone says, show them how keen you are. That's supposed to win you points, not lose them. I'll be fired before the day's over, and all because I used a bit of initiative. I'll have to dust off the fucking CV. Again.

But later, after lunch, he was summoned back to the river-view office.

‘Sit down, my boy,' Mr Stears said. ‘Alec?'

‘Alec Parry, sir.'

‘Well, Alec, I've been thinking – maybe you shouldn't terminate your connection. Maybe you're overlooking an obvious strategy.'

‘I am, sir?'

Mr Stears took a couple of seconds to straighten his silk tie. He said, ‘Do you like working here?'

‘Yes sir,' Alec said cautiously. He was no longer certain how clever it was to show keenness.

‘Would you like to work on a special project?'

‘I really would,' Alec said. This was more like it. This was
way
more cool.

‘Then, perhaps you'd like to reconsider. If you were to continue this correspondence, in your own time of course, until you find out who you're writing to, you might have something to contribute.'

‘I'd like that, sir.'

‘But I can't stress strongly enough how cautious you must be. You must remember that you may be in touch with a member of Birdie Walker's family and it's impossible to overestimate how paranoid she is about media attention, how jealously she guards even those things of Jack's which should be in the public domain. Really, Alec, she's like the cobra coiled round the treasure chest.'

‘I'll be super-careful.'

‘And report back to me at every stage.'

‘To you?' Alec said, gleefully. ‘Personally?'

‘I'll give you the number of my private line. And I'd like copies of the correspondence.'

‘That may be a bit inhibiting, sir.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, I'll have to tell my informant a bit about myself if I'm going to personalise things. Sometimes you have to come on a bit strong if you want to intrigue people. I don't even know if I'm talking to a man or a woman.'

‘All right then, a
précis
will do. But be careful. Expose yourself, Alec, and we could all be shot.'

War games, Alec thought, infiltrators. Spies on Level Four. And a foot in the door of the river-view office. When he left this time he thought maybe Mr Stears wasn't such a bad old fart after all – a bit slow, but he got there in the end.

A few days later he found out who g.ace was. He called Mr Stears immediately. ‘Grace Emerson,' he said.

‘Good God,' said Mr Stears. ‘The niece.'

‘Should I have recognised the name?'

‘No. Better that you don't. At least … no, let me think about it. I'll talk to you later.' He hung up.

Alec was elated. He was really making an impression now, on all fronts. He was Mr Stears's blue-eyed boy, and Grace thought he was perceptive and sensitive. The dialogue with her quickly opened up to include books, movies and politics. But not sport. Sport, he'd learned the hard way, could be a chick repellent. On the other hand he confessed to a liking for sci-fi, because she would've expected something of the sort.

‘dont give me a hard time on that,' he wrote.

‘nobody perfect,' she replied. ‘ursulaleguin ok.'

He liked her for knowing Ursula Le Guin.

‘perfectwoman,' he wrote, ‘dont tell me u married, 68, need walking frame.'

‘how did u guess?' she wrote back.

‘u breakin my heart.'

‘got one? wow.'

Sassy, good fun, he decided. She didn't immediately ask for his phone number when he flirted. He awarded her points for that. It kept the game alive.

The game picked up speed. Mr Stears took him, in his chauffeur-driven car, to a Vietnamese restaurant in Soho to meet a man who was introduced as Mr Freel.

‘This is Alec,' Mr Stears said, ‘the bright young man I've been telling you about.'

Mr Freel looked the part: tall, weighty without flab, intent, grave. Impressive. Alec tried to sit straighter. He found himself playing to Mr Freel. Mr Stears seemed to recede into the shadows.

Yes, Alec thought, the secret to being in charge was to look as if you're in charge.

Mr Freel said, ‘It seems to me that you've used your imagination. You saw the potential and acted on it. I congratulate you. How happy would you be to continue?'

Alec gave himself a moment to look as if he was weighing up his answer. ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Freel,' he said with what he hoped was a thoughtful smile, ‘I'm enjoying myself. The Jack
production is great and I'm glad to be involved. My own part in it is tangential, I know. But it makes me feel involved.'

‘It sounds to me as if this young man's a natural, Barry.'

‘Well, he's with us on an internship,' Mr Stears said, ‘so he's learning all aspects of the business. But he lacks experience.'

‘I should think, by the time this project's in the can, he'll have gained plenty of experience. You ought to take him under your wing, Barry. Or maybe someone else will snap him up.'

‘This is a slightly unusual situation, though,' Mr Stears said. ‘Most projects don't require this degree of subterfuge.'

‘Most projects, thank the Lord, don't require the co-operation of Birdie Walker. I expect you've included her in your research, Alec?'

‘Yes, sir.' Alec raised his brows and flicked his eyes to the ceiling. Both older men smiled.

‘So are you willing to beard the she-wolf in her lair?' Mr Freel asked, still smiling. ‘Because it might come to that. Somehow we have to find out, first, does the Antigua Movie really exist? Then, if it does, and we're pretty sure it does, it becomes a matter of persuading Birdie to let us have it. No small problem, I might add. I don't know how far you're able to go with the niece, but it could be very useful to have a line on a member of that family.'

Alec waited, almost holding his breath. In fact, he'd already begun an absorbing fantasy starring himself as the subduer of the famous bitch-goddess. He was waiting for Mr Freel to order him into the front line. But apparently that wasn't his style. So eventually Alec asked, ‘Is Grace anything like Birdie, do you think?'

‘I only met her when she was a little girl,' said Mr Freel. ‘What do you make of her?'

‘I like her so far,' Alec said. ‘Which is to say, I like the persona she's sending.'

‘And does she like the persona you're sending?'

‘We're still talking. If you don't like someone it's easy to sign off.'

‘Tell me about her.'

‘Well, I think she's bright, funny and sort of her own woman.
It's hard to say. We talk about a lot of things. I didn't want her to think that Jack was the only reason I was interested.'

‘Very wise,' Mr Freel said. ‘Barry, it looks like you picked a winner here.'

Being called a winner by someone like Mr Freel gave Alec the sort of confidence he hadn't tasted since he left college. The real world, for him, had been a series of rejections. It was a place where nobody recognised him and nobody took the time to get to know him. Ultimately nobody would remember his name because nobody gave him the chance to be memorable. Now he was turning it around.

He gave Grace his phone number that night. She rang and they talked for two hours. He wasn't nervous about talking to her; encouragingly, she seemed much more nervous than he was.

‘Well,' she explained, ‘you meet a lot of weirdos on Jack's sites. Not you of course.'

She really wants to make a good impression on me, he thought, surprised and pleased. It's supposed to be the other way round, but she doesn't know that. It's me who's taking the risk, not her.

So he relaxed, and let her do the work. It's almost like a real relationship, he thought. Once started, the women take over and make all the moves.

Meeting was her idea. Going to her mother's house was her suggestion. Absolved of responsibility, Alec went along for the ride. It was during that period – of suggestions and possible arrangements – that she told him about her connection with Jack and Birdie.

‘It's just a family thing,' she said. ‘I didn't want you to think I was showing off.'

‘Why would I think that?' he asked, tense with excitement, staring down at the telephone as if it might be possible to
see
her at the other end of the line.

‘Dunno,' she said. ‘Some people get funny when they know you've got famous relations.'

‘Got me,' he said. ‘I'm turning into a monster. You'd better call off our date – oh-oh – I'm turning green – oh, my fangs and claws …'

‘Shut up,' she said, laughing. ‘I didn't mean you. You're different.'

Weird, he thought, how much more interesting listening to a woman was when you were waiting for her to say something important. He'd always found listening difficult, but learned how to fake it. With Grace he was forced to listen properly. And the more he listened, the more details she gave him. It was quite a discovery.

She told him for instance that Jack was a major influence on her life. Not because of the music, but because of the damage drugs had done to him. ‘Everyone indulged him,' she said, ‘but no one helped him. Birdie was the only one who tried, but she was too close to the problem. She just wasn't qualified. It damaged her almost as much as it did him.'

‘Grace is biased, of course,' Mr Stears said when Alec reported the conversation. ‘If you ask me it was Birdie's extravagance and infidelity that tipped Jack over the edge. She led him a terrible dance.'

Nevertheless it was the story of Jack's fatal instability that led Grace to study psychology at university. Now she was working for a rehab unit in Bristol. She wanted eventually to become a therapist, but that would be a long way in the future.

‘I don't even understand my own past,' she said. ‘The family dynamic is dominated by a tragedy Birdie won't talk about.'

‘Why won't she talk about it?'

‘At first it was all too painful. Then she internalised, and now the wound has been left to fester for so long it would take a really skilled therapist to help her.'

‘Psychobabble,' commented Mr Stears. ‘If you want my opinion the poor girl's had the wool well and truly pulled over her eyes. But that's Birdie – wool-puller
extraordinaire.
She doesn't want to talk about it because she won't admit to her part in the tragedy.'

Mr Freel, as Alec might have expected, took a more practical view. ‘Grace is confiding in you,' he said. ‘Good work. Keep her talking.'

By the time he met her, he felt he had the situation completely under his thumb. By that time too, he knew what his assignment was.

He cleared the decks. He told his mother and his girlfriend that
he was being sent away on a junior management course and he wouldn't be in touch for a couple of weeks. He suffered an instruction session with Mr Stears, and two much more enjoyable afternoons, organised by Mr Freel, when he learned to operate the miniature equipment and tools he might need. Mr Freel, he reckoned, was The Guy.

Yes! he thought, as he watched Grace walk through the barrier at Paddington Station, game on!

He stepped forward, smiling easily. She was kind of cute – he wouldn't even have to pretend.

‘Hi, Grace,' he said quietly, and watched her face relax and her lips part. She likes me, he thought, instantly. Oh you little angel, you like me. And she did.

If the watchful expression on her face had changed to disappointment or hostility he would've been, in the first nanosecond, blasted to stardust. He would have had to say – to Mr Freel of all people – ‘She didn't like me. I don't know why. She just never gave me a chance.'

It wasn't something he could plan for or avert. The groundwork was perfect but, with girls, groundwork counted for nothing. They either went for you or they didn't.

But she did. Her face relaxed, her eyes widened and her soft lips parted.

‘Hi, Cela Five,' she said, and held out her hand.

Game
on!

It was suddenly as if there had never been a doubt in his mind – like watching the ball sail into the back of the goal: ball, goal, destiny. What was intended happened.

He wasn't even surprised to find Birdie at Grace's house. Him, Birdie, destiny. The stars themselves were playing into his hands. The goal was huge, the ball needed no persuasion. Alec was on a roll.

What did surprise him though was Birdie herself. He was expecting a towering figure. It wasn't that he'd imagined her to be unchanged from how she looked in the pictures he'd seen in Archives. It was more that he expected her to be … well, bigger – more imposing. When he saw Grace dancing with her, his first
reaction was that Grace was the aunt and Birdie was the niece. No aunt he'd ever known danced like that.

He watched her, listened to her conversation with Grace and couldn't believe she was of the same generation as his own mother. The talk was quick and spicy, peppered with laughter.

The mother was more what he expected: slower, vaguer, more out of it. He had to work at remembering she was in the room and including her. Grace had described her as a bit of an old hippie and she hadn't misled him. He felt he could safely leave the mother out of the equation.

‘What d'you think?' Grace said, breezing into his room, her brother's room.

‘We-ell,' he began hesitantly, ‘kind of amazing for her age.'

‘Age?' Grace laughed indignantly. ‘Typical ageist orientation.'

‘OK, she's just amazing,' he said. ‘And so are you. It's an amazing family.'

‘Amazing Grace,' she said, striking a pose. ‘And don't you forget it.'