The Spoiler (20 page)

But it was not Paul. It was the very opposite of Paul. A young woman with the abundant décolletage of a Restoration wench stood in the doorway. She was clearly a gate-crasher, and the proof of her outsider status was in her hands—a large bunch of hideous candy-pink blooms.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Tamara said. “I’m here to see Honor Tait. I’m a journalist, a friend of hers. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her about an article I’m writing.”

Aidan, smiling like a malevolent pixie, did not believe a word of it but showed her in; another
amuse-bouche
for the party.

“Welcome to Olympia,” he said.

“Really?” Tamara said, startled. She was sure she was in Maida Vale.

A gleam of spiteful pleasure played across Aidan’s eyes.

By now Honor was feeling woozy, one hand stroking the warm, inert
paw of the young actor, the other outstretched as Inigo topped up her drink. She was watching the exchanges around her like a newcomer in the hospitality seats at Wimbledon, unfamiliar with the rules but enjoying the spectacle.

Her first response to the sight of the new arrival was disappointment; it was not her Paul. Who was going to invigorate the evening with dispatches from the real world? Then her disappointment hardened into irritation; it was the half-witted Tara from
The Monitor
. The girl’s face was stamped with a silly rictus of a smile, and she was holding another bunch of garage forecourt flowers.

“I’m so sorry,” Tamara said breathlessly before Honor had time to speak. “I tried to contact you. I called your publishers but they wouldn’t give me your number.”

“You bet I wouldn’t,” Ruth said, walking into the sitting room and drying her hands on her voluminous skirt. “Tamara Sim? You’re becoming a nuisance caller.”

Ruth looked towards Honor for endorsement but found that the old woman’s attention had shifted towards the hall, down which Paul, flak-jacketed and fuming, was striding.

“Door was open, Honor. Hope you don’t mind.”

He knew he did not need to apologise. Honor got to her feet and, dropping Hamlet’s unresponsive hand, accepted Paul Tucker’s ursine embrace. She shooed the relieved actor away and directed Paul to the needlepoint footstool, where he sat, monumental and masculine as Rodin’s
Thinker
.

“So, darling, what’s the latest from Kabul? Tell all,” Honor said.

Ruth gave a testy gasp and retreated to the kitchen, while Tamara, temporarily forgotten, shrank into a corner. Paul Tucker she recognised straightaway. He did not seem to have changed his clothes since the Archway meeting last week, and he talked unstoppably, with a level stare, as if permanently addressing a camera. But who were the others?

She recognised Clemency Twisk from the charity event. The little ruddy-faced Scotsman who had answered the door was raising his glass at Tamara and winking in a manner that was not entirely friendly, while another middle-aged man, squat as a frog, with bulging eyes, was waving a cigarette. Her reportorial antennae began to twitch at the sight of a young man who seemed to be backing away from the pop-eyed smoker. He had the blond good looks of a Scandinavian superhero, and there
was something tantalisingly familiar about him. Tucker’s monologue gathered speed, his voice rumbling like an approaching landslide, and Tamara ducked into the kitchen. The publisher was muttering to herself as she unpacked small pastries and arranged them on plates, like counters in a board game.

“Anything I can do to help?” Tamara asked, propping the flowers by the sink. Ruth sighed and poured herself another slug of wine.

“You’ve got a nerve. You really have. You mess up an interview, completely alienate one of my writers, then you waltz in uninvited—gate-crash her party!—and expect to get a warm welcome.”

“It wasn’t like that. Honestly,” Tamara pleaded. “She was difficult. Impossible. I tried my best. They really want this piece on
S
^*
nday
magazine and I’m running out of options.”

“We made it quite plain when we set up the interview. Honor Tait is a very private person.”

“It’s not too much to ask, is it? A few details? Family? Her glamorous life? This isn’t a hatchet job we’re planning.
S
^*
nday
doesn’t do hatchet jobs. You know that.”

Ruth unpacked more pastries onto a plate.

“Look, I warned you. She despises all this personal prying. And besides, Honor Tait’s writing speaks for itself. Look up her biography if you want. It’ll be in the cuttings. But don’t expect any quotes from her.”

“Come on. You’re her publisher,” Tamara said, her arms outstretched in an appeal for sympathy. “You’re a commercial outfit, not a charity. Don’t you want to spread the word about your product? Make some money?”

Ruth licked her fingers.

“We’re not a charity, no. But commercial? Chance would be a fine thing.” She passed a plate of pastries to Tamara. “I suppose you can make yourself useful now you’re here. No one else has offered to help. Take these and pass them round.”

Tamara moved deferentially through the sitting room distributing the food, then picked up a couple of bottles and went round refilling glasses. Tucker was still holding court, and the only permitted interruptions were from Honor.

“So it’s been sealed off?” she asked.

“Yes. Thousands have fled. The place is a ghost town. Only the sick and old, those who can’t move, remain, living like rats in basements.
You’re crunching over spent cartridges in the ruins, past heaps of rubble that were once apartment blocks …”

“More wine?” Tamara whispered. He glanced up, his eyes locking briefly onto her chest. Then he held out his glass and continued.

“The infrastructure’s been totally trashed …”

Tamara retreated to the kitchen where Ruth was noisily washing plates.

“Here,” said the publisher, passing a corkscrew covered in soapsuds. “Open another bottle.”

Tamara refilled Ruth’s glass, then poured one for herself. They could still hear the TV newsman’s voice from the sitting room, as insistent and uninflected as a Black and Decker drill.

“He’s quite something, Paul Tucker,” Tamara said.

“Yes, isn’t he just?”

“How well does he know Honor … Miss Tait?” Tamara asked, casually picking up a tea towel and wiping a plate.

“If you’re trying to ingratiate yourself here,” Ruth said, “you’re doing a pretty good job.”

“I just need another hour with her, to get some quotes on her famous friends.”

Ruth’s eyebrows arched in warning.

“You’re wasting your time.”

She immersed an enamel saucepan in the suds, holding it down forcefully as if drowning a puppy.

“We need to bring this interview to life,” Tamara said. “I’ve got to get an idea about what she’s really like, off duty as it were.”

“I’m not sure I can persuade her to spend another minute with you.”

“It would be really useful to know who’s here, for a start. You know, build a picture of her from her circle of friends. Who’s the little Scotsman who answered the door, for instance?”

“Aidan Delaney. The poet,” Ruth said. “Won the Margrave Prize for his last collection,
Strychnine Kisses
?”

“Of course. And the skinny one with the laugh?”

“Inigo Wint. The artist. There was a double-page spread on him in
Zeitgeist
last week.”

“Oh yes, I thought I recognised him,” Tamara lied. Was she meant to be familiar with German newspapers, too?

“You must know Clemency. She’s always in the culture pages.”

“Yes. I’ve seen her around. Human-rights meetings, that sort of thing.”

“Everyone knows
Clemency
,” continued Ruth, with an emphasis that suggested buried resentments. She balanced a glass decanter upside down on the draining board. “She’s a ‘power in the land.’ You can’t go to a first night, a gallery opening or a serious book launch without bumping into Clemency.”

Not so buried then. Tamara reached for the decanter.

“And the chunky man with the … large eyes?” she said. “The smoker …?”

As Tamara gestured with her right hand to indicate a cigarette, the decanter slipped through her fingers and smashed on the floor like a glass grenade. There was a shocked silence in the kitchen, but outside, in the sitting room, Paul Tucker did not miss a beat.

“And then the gunfire started again and, for a moment, I thought I was a goner,” they heard him say.

Ruth tutted, reached into a cupboard for a dustpan and brush and thrust them into Tamara’s hands.

“That’s it. I knew I should have thrown you out.”

Tamara knelt contritely by the shards.

“I really am terribly sorry. I’m only trying to do my job, write my story, do justice to your author.”

“There are proper channels for this sort of thing, you know,” Ruth said. “Oh, just get up, for heaven’s sake.”

Tamara struggled to her feet.

“Shall I take out some more food?” she asked.

Ruth shook her head at the girl’s effrontery, but there were no other volunteers. She thrust a plate at Tamara and nodded towards the door.

Tamara approached the blond Viking first, bending low over him with the canapés. He declined with a shake of the head.

Paul Tucker was holding Honor Tait’s hand with a new intensity and seemed to have paused for breath. The Scots poet was sounding off on the subject of “Telstar” now. Or perhaps it was Tolstoy.

“The extraordinary thing was his transparent admiration for Murat,” he said.

Tamara hovered, hoping to make herself inconspicuous and to keep track of the conversation. The tubby smoker intervened, waving his cigarette like a fairy wand to make some point about St. Petersburg and the Caucasus, confirming that they were not, after all, talking about the hit
single by the Tornadoes, pioneers of electronic pop, but about the author of the blockbuster
War and Peace
.

“Stuffed vine leaf?” Tamara asked, leaning into Tucker’s weather-beaten face.

The room fell silent. He gazed at her cleavage, as if it was that intriguingly contoured arrangement of flesh, rather than the mouth located some way above it, that had addressed him.

Honor Tait appeared to wake from a pleasurable dream and took in Tamara properly for the first time since her arrival.

“Are you still here?”

“Yes. I just—”

“I don’t remember inviting you.”

Honor sipped her drink meditatively, as if the glass itself was the repository of her memory. Seated next to the bulk of Paul Tucker, she seemed absurdly tiny and wizened, like an ancient relict of Tamara’s childhood doll’s house.

“I thought we might have the chance of another chat? For my feature?”

Tamara heard a polyphonic gasp.

“This really is an unpardonable intrusion,” Honor said.

Ruth appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding a roasting fork.

“I just thought …” Tamara continued.

“You just
thought
,” Honor said.

Was she mocking Tamara, elongating the vowel in a bad impersonation of her London accent?

“I doubt,” the old woman continued, “whether you’ve ever had an original thought in your life.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Ruth said, escorting Tamara down the hallway. “You’ve completely ballsed it up now,” she added in a whisper.

Tamara glanced around her, frantic for one more chance, something to hang on to, one thing that would save this evening, this story, her contract. On the hall table was a stack of mail and a small pile of invitations.

“Just one thing. Could you tell me? Please?” pleaded Tamara, backing towards the table as Ruth opened the front door. “The boy in the corner? The good-looking blond one who didn’t say anything. Was that Moon-face from the
Faraway Tree
?”

Ruth threw up her hands in exasperation before grabbing Tamara’s left arm, firmly leading her into the corridor, closing the door on her beseeching face and securing the bolt behind her.

She returned to her flat, threw down her bag and walked to her desk with the heavy tread of a condemned woman approaching the gallows. Only 3,800 words stood between her and a contract with the most distinguished magazine in British journalism, between success and failure, recognition and loveless obscurity. But the terrible truth was that she had nothing to say. It was not just the job she needed; it was the life. And not just
her
life; her brother’s, too. With a little money she might be able to reintroduce Ross to other possibilities: to happiness without chemical assistance; to the fulfilment of work and the satisfactions of independence; to the attractions of a pleasing, ordered home; to personal hygiene. Ross could start again. It was not too late.

Tamara had dreamed of putting a deposit on a rented cottage for him, somewhere safe and remote, beyond the reach of his low-life friends. Maybe Cornwall. Ross liked Cornwall. They had gone on holiday there with their parents before the divorce, and Ross had talked about going back—“reconnecting.”

He would probably never hold down a job again, in the conventional sense. He had dropped out of school and worked in a record shop for a while, but his shoplifting convictions (he was not acquisitive, just feeding his habit) ended any prospect of a career in retail. The routine, the requirement to get up in the morning and be in a certain place at a certain time, would be too much for him now, though when it came to scoring and making assignations with dealers, he hared about London with a determined speed-walker’s gait. Maybe he could take up something creative, a job where you could choose your own hours, work through the night and sleep through the day if you wanted. Candle making, perhaps. There was a lot of candle making in Cornwall. There were a lot of dealers
there, too, she supposed, but if the cottage was sufficiently isolated, it might take Ross a while to track them down, long enough for him to get clean, wake up and realise what he had been missing all these years.

Upstairs the solicitors had turned on their music. The whole house shuddered to the sound—Tod Maloney, a suburban boy in mascara, yowling about “Life on the Dark Side.” Tamara reached for her earplugs. She loved her flat, and worked hard to pay for it. She would not be driven out. The rent was a struggle, but most nights, after hurrying along the tapering corridor of her street, stealthily feeling her way down the unlit external stairs and turning her key with fumbling haste, she felt a rush of pleasure once she closed the door and stepped inside. This was her sanctuary, her place of safety. The neighbours were an occasional nuisance, certainly, but nothing bad could ever happen here, within the confines of her flat. Except, perhaps, failure and a silent phone.