Slime (9 page)

11

Bleary-eyed, Tim opened the fridge door and peered inside. No milk. All that had happened over the past few days had left him too shattered even to swear. The thought of making do with black coffee floated through his mind, but he rejected it. His stomach felt queasy and his mouth tasted foul. He pulled on his old jeans and a sweater, then wandered down to the shops at the end of the road.

Most of the night he’d spent lying awake, going over it all in his mind, still unable to grasp it. OK, he’d known their marriage had been going wrong, and he’d not been exactly faithful himself, but he couldn’t get over what she’d told him. Quite calmly, too. No histrionics; no recriminations.

‘I want a divorce,’ she said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. She might have been ordering a taxi, the way she said it. ‘Don’t argue, please, Tim. You know it’s the sensible thing.’

‘Do I hell!’he’d exploded.

Why she’d chosen that moment to tell him, he just couldn’t understand. They’d lost each other over the past weeks and months, he admitted it; they’d become like strangers. He’d noticed it with their phone calls too: at one time they’d been bursting with things to say, but that had given way to long silences as they tried to
make
conversation. Then there were the subjects he skirted around, knowing his opinions only offended her – at least since she’d got herself involved with that crowd at Totnes. It hadn’t always been like that.

The trouble was, she’d convinced him it could all be
put right again. From the moment she’d picked him up at the station and driven him to that Devon holiday flat, she’d seemed to be taking their marriage in hand. They’d made love the way they always used to after a period apart. Not only once either; once had never been enough. They were coming back to each other, he’d imagined. That was the impression she’d given; it was what he’d wanted, too.

‘One of those quickie divorces would be best,’ she’d stated coolly, always practical. ‘No need to drag it out contesting anything – agreed?’

No, he did not bloody agree. He was hurt, bewildered, unsure how to handle the situation. If this was what she’d intended, why had she led him on that evening?

That bloody jellyfish must be at the root of it, he felt sure. Probably she was still suffering from shock. First the cat, terrifying enough, and then that poor woman in the shop who’d died on the way to hospital. That session at the police station afterwards hadn’t helped, either, when they’d had to explain to a suspicious detective-sergeant why they had put the jellyfish in their bucket in the first place. She’d made no accusations, either then or later, but it was obvious she blamed him for it all.

But no, she rejected that explanation and insisted she’d been planning to tell him all along.

‘Tell me what, for Chrissake?’

‘I want a divorce, Tim,’ she’d repeated gently. ‘Don’t make it worse for yourself. Please.’

‘I love you,’ he’d tried, meaning it.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not enough.’

At the corner grocer’s Tim collected a carton of long-life milk – it was all they had – and a fresh Vienna loaf. He’d buy a paper, he decided as he emerged into the street again. Whatever happened about Sue and the divorce, he
had to make some attempt at normality. Go through the motions.

‘I’ll take one of each,’ he informed the woman behind the counter, and produced a crumpled five pound note.

‘It’s all jellyfish today,’ she commented tartly. She totted up the prices, then counted out his change. ‘Can’t be much real news if they fill the papers with jellyfish.’

‘They
are
killers,’ he pointed out. His hand grumbled again beneath the bandages, reminding him.

‘So is the car,’ she retorted. ‘I see no headlines about that.’

Back at the flat he dropped the papers on the sofa and went over to the phone. It was still early, shortly after nine; Sue was bound to be at home. He dialled her number, aching to talk to her.

No answer.

He let it ring for some time, thinking maybe she was still in bed, or in the bathroom, on the loo even, anything rather than admit to himself that she’d probably not been back to her own flat all night. Here were people being slaughtered by these jellyfish, he thought resentfully – irrationally, he knew – and there was no one he could talk it over with. He put the phone down, hating the sight of it.

Ring Jane, perhaps?

But Jane was only interested in whether or not she sold her story. What else mattered to her?

No, it was Sue’s voice he wanted to hear, no one else’s. He’d tried the theatre the day before, but they’d said she was rehearsing. Deliberate, of course. She was refusing to speak to him.

It was Gulliver’s fault their relationship had broken up. If only he’d never taken that part.

Oh, fuck Gulliver!

The company had insisted on his showing his injured hand to their own doctor.

‘Lot o’ money tied up in you, hope you realise,’ the executive producer had boomed down the phone at him. ‘Have to watch our investment, don’t you know? Pop into the office once you’ve seen him. I’ll buy you lunch.’

Beer and a sandwich, thought Tim gloomily; he’d experienced Jackson Philips’s lunches before.

The consulting room was fashionably uncluttered, elegant, and equipped with all the latest medical hardware, including a micro-computer on the desk. A far cry from his own GP’s shabby back room with its roll-top desk and worn carpet. Tidying the shelves of a glass-fronted cabinet was a strikingly beautiful nurse with skin the colour of chocolate. As for the doctor himself, he was a youngish man of clean, athletic appearance, probably not yet forty, and plenty of muscle. No casting director could have made a better choice.

‘Jellyfish, eh?’ The doctor watched as the nurse removed Tim’s bandage. ‘Didn’t believe it at first, not till I saw the papers.’

He worked briskly, examining the raw wounds on Tim’s hand and wrist, checking his blood pressure, heart, temperature… He was a keen sailor himself, he said, and had come across quite a few jellyfish in his time. Nothing like this, of course, not unless one counted the Portuguese man-of-war he’d met in the Caribbean. Didn’t quite fit the same description, did it?

‘No,’ said Tim.

‘Now I’ll not beat about the bush. I’m going to give you an injection, just to be on the safe side. Normally I’d advise you to take it easy for a week or two, but I understand the company is anxious to resume filming as early as possible. Question of schedules, whatever that means. I can’t honestly tell them you’re not up to working. Wouldn’t be true.’

‘So – no time off?’

‘Afraid not.’

The beautiful nurse administered the injection with unerring aim, straight into his left buttock; meanwhile, the doctor tapped away at his micro-computer. When Tim had hoisted his clothes up again, she helped him with his belt, her long fingers threading it deftly. No smile: just the professional touch. If only life were always like that, he thought.

The doctor accompanied him to the door.

‘Don’t overdo it, will you? Any problem, just give me a call. Day or night.’

Tim accepted the doctor’s card, slipping it into his breast pocket without reading it. They must be paying him a fortune, he thought. Try ringing his own GP in the middle of the night. You’d be lucky if you got an answering machine.

All this opulence made him sour. Sue was right, he told himself bitterly as he went along the plush corridor towards the lifts. He
had
betrayed something they both believed in. Acting meant a dedication to the truth. That was a view they had shared so instinctively, they had hardly needed to discuss it.

Naïve, perhaps. And he wished he could still believe in it the way Sue did. Of course, actors had always been social outcasts, which had made the truth possible: no need to compromise.

That was the betrayal.

Here he was now: a servant of the company and the nearest thing to ‘corporation man’ an actor could become. Treated by the suave, expensive doctor at the company’s bidding, treading the deep-pile carpets of the corridors of power on his way to see Jackson Philips who occupied a higher rung on the ladder and must therefore be approached with deference.

Tim brooded over it as he went down in the lift. He’d
been swallowed by the company, body and soul. He was their property, marketed by them like the latest bio-detergent. Oh yes, Sue was certainly right. He’d lost his way in this commercial maw; no wonder she’d turned her back on him. Yet even as he thought about it, he knew he’d no wish to go back to that draughty top flat with the peeling wallpaper and to those long days of waiting for the phone to ring, eager to accept anything – one line, a spit and a cough; a face in a crowd; an unpaid part in some lunchtime fringe play – anything.

Gulliver was a trap, he admitted it. A plush trap.

He left the building by the main entrance and paused at the edge of the wide pavement to wait for a gap in the traffic before dashing across the road to the company’s studios on the other side. They were housed in a multistorey structure of green glass which reflected the life of the street and the sky’s billowing clouds with startling clarity. The design was typical of television, he thought as he went up the broad steps to the revolving doors; towards the main road was the public face – smooth, rich and confident, not a wrinkle in sight; but to the rear, hidden from view, were the scene docks, carpentry and paint shops, the grimy yard with its lorries, patches of spilled oil and garbage skips.

‘Morning, Mr Ewing!’ The uniformed commissionaire wore three rows of medal ribbons, but was mainly celebrated in the company for his racing tips. ‘Sorry to hear about that nasty do you had.’

Tim turned on the charm. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘I’d an aunt stung by a jellyfish once,’ the commissionaire confided. ‘Didn’t improve her temper, though. Think it’s true they can kill?’

‘I’m afraid it is. I’ve seen it.’

‘Hardly credit it, would you? Jellyfish, eh?’

Jackson Philips was in the outer office talking to his secretary when Tim arrived on the fifth floor. In most ways he was typical of his generation of television producers. Recruited directly from university – in his case, Cambridge – they had been given their heads in the intoxicating atmosphere of the raving sixties. They produced programmes which were watched throughout the length and breadth of the land. Some of the public loved them, others hated them – but everyone watched them.

Now, almost twenty years later, several of these whizz kids were in films or the theatre; others had turned up in Fleet Street and one was a cabinet minister. A few – among them Jackson Philips himself – had become top administrators in television where they were known for their toughness, if not actual duplicity. Their waist-lines had expanded, their faces filled out to show the first signs of developing double chins and heavy jowls, but they still – on salaries in excess of £40,000 a year – tended to regard themselves as radical critics of the establishment.

‘Be with you in a minute, Tim!’ Jackson called breezily over his shoulder, and went on discussing the sheaf of papers he held in his hand. Gulliver business, of course. Munich, Stockholm and Copenhagen were to be telexed, assuring them that the agreed dates would be met. ‘As for New York,’ he was saying, ‘they’re probably still eating their breakfast over there, but I’ll call them this afternoon.’

Keep your visitor waiting, thought Tim sourly. The old technique: he’s only a bloody actor after all. Mustn’t be allowed to get above his station. Yet where would he be if I walked out on him? Now. At this minute.

His hair was greying at the temples, yet how old could he be? Forty-two? Forty-three?

His secretary Margaret mothered him unashamedly. Her hair was always perfectly set, jet black, her figure still attractive beneath those rather formal clothes she always
wore. Only the backs of her hands betrayed the fact that she must be well over fifty by now.

‘Tim!’ Jackson turned away from what he’d been doing and placed an affectionate hand on Tim’s shoulder, propelling him towards the inner sanctum. ‘Sorry to keep you hanging about, old chap, but now we’ve established you
are
fit and well – fit enough to work, at any rate – I had a few messages of comfort to send off. How is the hand, by the way? Healing nicely?’

‘It’s a bloody nuisance, if you want to know. I imagine you’ve already spoken to the quack.’

‘Gave me a ring the moment you’d left.’ He settled himself smugly behind his large desk. ‘Oh, do sit down, Tim. I want a word about these jellyfish – though first, if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone else who’d like to be in on this.’ He pressed a key on his intercom. ‘Margaret, give Alan Brewer a tinkle, would you, to say Tim’s arrived?’

‘How’s New York?’ Tim asked, remembering what he’d overheard in the outer office. ‘Nibbling?’

Jackson’s expression changed. Where business was concerned he was like a rattlesnake. ‘Nibbling,’ he confirmed cautiously.

‘No sale yet?’

‘A chance they may bite.’ His tone was reluctant. ‘Look, this is all very confidential, you understand. Not to be spread around. It’s in all our interests we achieve a breakthrough in the States but I’d be grateful if you’d keep it under your hat for the time being.’

In all our interests? thought Tim broodily. It could make him internationally famous, certainly. Rich. And kill what little chance there was of putting things right with Sue. Was that what he really wanted?

‘Ah – here’s Alan!’ Jackson exclaimed as the door opened. He was obviously relieved to get away from the subject. ‘Alan, do come in, old chap! I don’t think you’ve met Tim, have you? Alan Brewer is in charge of current
documentaries. Old friends, Alan and I. Did our initial training course together.’

The newcomer shook Tim’s hand warmly enough, while at the same time regarding him with dark, cynical eyes. His scuffed grey suit sat on him uneasily; it had probably never really fitted him even when it was new. With it he wore a striped shirt and a nondescript blue tie. He was thin, as though he’d recently recovered from a wasting illness, but his face betrayed a sharp intelligence.