Heartbreaker (44 page)

I understand about Carta now. She’s a vision of a world that’ll be waiting for me when I can finally come home. She’s not just female fodder to be shagged and chucked. She’s to be respected and valued, just as the St. Benet’s people respected and valued
me.
And why did they respect and value me? Because they tune in daily to The Bloke and he makes sure they see me not as filth but as a human being designed by God. Richard didn’t tune in to The Bloke, but he treated me as special because he loved me, and love’s all about treating people as special, isn’t it? “Love one another!” said The Bloke, and he knew what he was talking about. You can shag a thousand people but without love you’re nothing. That’s because the heart of the universe isn’t exploitation and abuse and lies and cheating and wickedness and downright bloody evil. The heart of the universe is love.

“Gavin!
Gavin!
Wake up, pinhead! We’re stars!”

I return to earth after my brief glide around eternity. The applause has exploded again and we bow some more but eventually the band drifts into an ancient waltz and other couples return to the floor. Leaving the wrinklies creaking, Susanne and I head for our table where the maître d’ offers us complimentary glasses of—oh God—champagne.

The evening blazes on. The dessert cart cosies up to our table and I suddenly find I’m interested in eating (trifle with a spoonful of chocolate mousse). Later I order cheese, and with this final course I have a glass of port while Susanne has a farewell glass of champagne. But as the result of hitting the water bottles we’re still a long way from being legless. It would be criminal now, of course, to get trolleyed and ruin the golden impression we’ve created.

We stay until the band packs it in, and we dance the last waltz not exactly cheek to cheek but definitely chest to bowling-balls. Despite all the water-doses I’m not too happy about driving, but we purr back to Pimlico without smashing anything. We don’t speak. We’re still cocooned by our euphoria, and it’s not until we reach Norah’s street that I say: “Do I get invited in? I mean, should I start looking for a parking space?”

“I want to crash out.”

“Ah. Okay, in that case—”

“Stop! There’s a space!”

I stamp on the brake pedal but fluff the parking manoeuvre and wind up a metre from the curb.

“Not to worry,” says Susanne. “You won’t be staying long.”

Switching off the engine, I kill the lights and we look at each other in the pale glow of the streetlamp. Unexpectedly Susanne says: “When I was in therapy after my breakdown I learned a thing or two. I learned what the word ‘co-dependent’ means. Ever heard of it?”

“Sure.”

She doesn’t believe me. “Alcoholics have them, for instance. Co-dependents are the people who help the alcoholic cover up his way of life in the belief that they’re doing him a favour. Co-dependents like to do favours because they themselves are hooked on being needed. Got it?”

“Got it. But what’s all that to do with us?”

“Everything. Because I’m never going to be a co-dependent, never going to have a relationship with someone who earns his living from vice. By pretending a normal relationship’s possible, I’d wind up going along with the Life, I’d wind up a co-dependent doing favours, and that’s a guaranteed way to get trashed. So forget it. No one’s ever, ever going to trash me again.”

After a pause I say: “I’m getting out of the Life.”

“Oh yeah.” She smiles at me cynically, not believing a word I say. She doesn’t even bother to inflect the words into a question. “Well, so long, it’s been great, I really enjoyed myself. Thanks.”

I shoot out a hand and grab her. “What you’ve got to understand,” I say urgently, “is that Elizabeth truly cares about me, always has, and that’s why she gave me a home and a way of earning good money—okay, I know what I am, I’m not in denial, I’m a prostitute.
But not for much
longer.
I’m just waiting till I’ve reached my financial target. Then Elizabeth’s going to retire and we’ll go away together and live respectably ever after.”

Susanne just looks at me. Then she says abruptly: “You’d better come in for some coffee,” and seconds later I’m following her down the street to her flat.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” says Susanne, closing the front door behind us. “No shag of any kind, and if you start whingeing about being short-changed I’ll belt you. You drink your coffee without being a pain and when I tell you to go you go.”

I don’t bother to reply. I just pad along behind her and sit down, good as gold, at the kitchen table. I can cope with Susanne being combative. That’s everyday stuff. What worries me is Susanne lecturing me earnestly in psycho-babble and shouting me down with pregnant pauses.

She makes coffee. Both of us opt to drink it black. When she finally sits down opposite me she wastes no more time but says in her flattest voice: “You realise, of course, that Elizabeth and Norah still fuck each other.”

I’ve been expecting some anti-Elizabeth propaganda so I’m not too surprised by this remark. “No, they don’t,” I snap. “Elizabeth’s made herself very clear about that. Since their fling in the sixties they’ve been just good friends.”

“She’s bullshitting you. Why do you think she’s over at Norah’s every weekend? Because when the girls are out on the town, she and Norah and those bloody chihuahuas are making it in the master bedroom!”

I’m disgusted by the bitchiness of this lie. “How do you know?”

“I’ve seen it.”

I feel nothing for three seconds. Then I want to fall off my chair. But I can’t. I’m frozen to it. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. When I worked for Norah I was dumped by a punter one Saturday evening and when I got back early I heard the noises. So I crept up the stairs and watched through the hinges of the bedroom door. They hadn’t even bothered to close it.”

“Okay—okay, but this was before I arrived on the scene, right? I mean, maybe they got together once for old time’s sake but Elizabeth’s not a lesbian, there’s no way she could be seriously interested in—” I stop. I’ve suddenly realised I sound like Gil Tucker, refusing to believe I’m straight.

Meanwhile Susanne’s saying: “Don’t be dumb, Elizabeth’s beyond all that, she’s not interested in being limited by any kind of sex category, she’d screw anything she fancied—oh, wake up, pinhead, wake up! This is a woman who has photos in her bathroom of people doing things with turds, for God’s sake—”

“Yes, but—”

“You want the truth? You big enough to take it? Or are you just going to go on bleating about how much Elizabeth cares for you?”

“I—”

“Okay, let me tell it like it is. Elizabeth’s psycho, Gavin. She’s not running around with an axe and a nutso look, like in films, and you could talk to her for a long time before you realised something was off, but once the penny drops it’s as if you see the word PSYCHO tattooed on her forehead. Know what I mean? No, you don’t, do you—I’ll have to spell it out. Basically she doesn’t relate to people—relate normally, I mean. She understands the way they work but she’s not emotionally into people, no way, she just uses them to make herself feel good. Elizabeth doesn’t get her best kicks from sex—sex for her is just a fun way of passing the time, like watching game shows on telly. What turns her on— really, really turns her on—is power. That’s why she’s into businesses where she can OD on domination—sex groups, psychic healing, bogus counselling—yeah, you notice that when I had my breakdown and she wanted to make sure I got my head together properly she didn’t attempt to treat me herself! Oh no! She wanted me up and running as soon as possible so that she could start a new line in domination by training me to be her PA. You name it, she’ll try and dominate it: escort girls, a pretty-boy prostitute, a slimeball locksmith, even an old friend like Norah, poor cow, who’s been in love with her for years—”

“But Norah likes young girls!”

“And Elizabeth likes young men! So what? That wouldn’t stop Norah being in love with Elizabeth and Elizabeth trying to dominate her! And then, my God, there’s the Cobra himself, there’s bloody Asherton. Why do you think he and Elizabeth have been in each other’s pockets all this time? No, sex doesn’t come into it, and no, it’s not just because they feed off each other’s businesses. They’re hooked on the rush they get out of knowing there’s nothing the other won’t do in a world where perviness rules okay and no bloody holds are barred! I’m telling you, she’s got a major screw loose, she’s sicko, and if you weren’t so like a little boy who’s lost his mum and clings to the first stranger who pats his head, you’d know that as well as I do!”

I know I have to assume an air of total calm. Glancing nonchalantly at my watch I say: “Well, I can’t expect you to understand. You don’t know her like I do.” But my voice comes out more thinly than I intend and I sound strained.

“You’re wrong,” she says at once. “I know more about that woman than you’ve even begun to imagine.”

“Then tell me more!”

“No way! I’m not saying one single thing about her business interests to you!”

“You mean you’re quite happy to keep your mouth shut for this— quote—psycho?”

“Well, look at it this way: I’m not the only PA in the world who has to keep her mouth zipped. Think of the people who work at MI5 or GCHQ!”

I hear what she’s saying about confidentiality, but all my anxiety about Elizabeth’s future business plan for me now flares up. I blurt out: “Has Elizabeth ever mentioned to you that she wants to get me into porn movies—real movies, not just stuff like the Austin Friars edits?”

Susanne hesitates but decides a possible future project doesn’t require the same discretion as a present going concern. “Yeah,” she says, “and I can see her point of view. You’re getting to be an elderly pretty-boy, but you’d be good for at least another five years as a film stud. They could put make-up over your lines and you could wear a hairpiece if you have a big moult.”

I say unsteadily: “I’m not doing another five years in the Life. I don’t like being filmed when I fuck anyway, it’s too bloody stressful, almost as stressful as escort work when you’re expected to treat the punters as people instead of meat.” I know Susanne will understand this. That’s why I’m tempted to add impulsively: “I wouldn’t mind retiring now—I haven’t got as much money as I’d planned but I’ve got enough in my Cayman Islands account to buy a boat and get by for a while.”

An extreme stillness comes over Susanne. She’s been fidgeting with her coffee-mug but now her fingers halt.

Clearing my throat I say: “Of course you must know about the Cayman Islands accounts. I’ve only got one but Elizabeth’s got several.”

“Sure,” says Susanne to the coffee-mug. “I log the statements on the computer.”

I know I’ll get nowhere if I ask a direct question. Instead I just keep talking in a casual voice as if we’re discussing something trivial. “As you open all Elizabeth’s post,” I say, “I expect you’ve wondered why my account statements go to her and not to me.”

Silence.

“It’s because when she opened the account for me I was a new taxpayer and she knew the Revenue could take an interest in any mail I got from a tax haven. But as she’d already established her own accounts she reckoned her mail was safe from their snooping. So that’s why my statements go to her and she passes them on to me.”

More silence.

I stand up before I can start hyperventilating. “Well,” I say, “I’d better be going before I outstay my welcome, but thanks for the coffee.” Then I sit down again with a thump. From a long way away my voice mutters: “Okay, how’s she screwing me?”

“I’m not saying a single bloody word! It was one thing to help you out of the stupid mess you got into with those tapes—it didn’t involve her businesses and I could make sure the risk was non-existent, but the Cayman accounts are in a different league. You think I want to wind up in a cage at the Cobra’s?”

I take another shallow breath. I sort of know what’s happened but I can’t believe it. The knowledge is so terrible that my brain just closes down whenever I try to put the knowledge into words.

The next moment I’m whispering: “Please tell me. Please,” but Susanne’s one step ahead of me. She must have realised I was going to beg. “There’s another reason why I can’t talk,” she says, but she’s stopped acting tough and her voice is far from unsympathetic. “If I grassed I’d need to be taken care of in a safe place, but you couldn’t take care of me because your Elizabeth fixation means you can’t even take care of yourself. And you don’t know a safe place anyway.”

At once I answer: “You’re wrong about that. The people at St. Benet’s would help us.”

“Oh, pull the other one! Pinhead, you’re
such
a liar—”

“No, listen,
listen,
I’m coming clean with you, I swear it! I’ve got a connection with St. Benet’s that Elizabeth knows nothing about—it’s the missing dimension of the story I told you about the tapes—”

“Shit, I knew you were keeping something back! What the hell have you been getting up to?”

My nerve fails. I’m exhausted, I’m shocked and I’m almost paralysed with fear. Time to back off before I make some catastrophic mistake— but maybe the mistake’s already been made. If Susanne now goes to Elizabeth and says—

“Wait a sec,” says Susanne sharply as if sensing I’m about to cut and run, “how about this for an idea? You tell me about St. Benet’s and I’ll tell you about the Cayman accounts. Then we’re safe because if one of us snitches on the other, the other can snitch back, so snitching’s no longer an option.”

I try to get my head round this. I feel it’s probably the solution but I’m in such a state I can’t cope. “Sounds good,” I say, “but I’m knackered. Let me grab some sleep and come back here at nine.”

She doesn’t argue. It’s probably obvious that I’m past it. And maybe she too wants a breather. “Okay,” she says, “but do me a favour on your way here later and pick up a copy of the
Sunday Times.
I never miss their business section.”

We stand in the little hall by the front door like two nerdy teenagers uncertain how to end their first date. Eventually I bend my head to give her a peck on the cheek, but in the end I don’t kiss her. Our faces glide past each other and the next thing I know we’re having a comradely hug. Funny thing is her breasts don’t remind me of bowling balls any more. They remind me of top-quality pillows, the kind you long to bury your face in after a bloody awful day at work.