Ecstasy (2 page)

– Yes, Beaumont, the wanton streak, though, has appeal in a filly, though that streak must be broken if the woman is to become a dutiful wife. It is this streak that I shall break tonight!

Sir Rodney was unaware that a tall spinster was standing behind the velvet
curtain
. Miss May had heard everything. She moved off, into the body of the party, leaving him with his thoughts of Yasmin. Tonight would be

Yvonne was distracted by a knock on the door. It was her friend Lorraine Gillespie. – Ye on a late, Yvonne? Lorraine smiled at her. It was an unusual smile, Yvonne thought, one which always seemed to be directed at something beyond its recipient. Sometimes when she looked at you like that, it was as if it wasn’t even Lorraine at all.

– Yeah, worst bleedin luck. That fucking Sister Bruce; proper old bag she is.

– Ye want tae see that Sister Patel … her fuckin patter, Lorraine winced. – You will go-ooh and change the bedclothes, and when you have done this, you will go-ooh and do the drug round, and when you have done this you will go-oh-oh and do the temperatures and then when you have done this go-oh-oh …

– Yeah … Sister Patel. She’s damaged goods, that one.

– Yvonne, is it cool for me tae make a brew, aye?

– Yeah, sorry … you stick on the kettle, will ya, Lorraine? – I’m sorry to be such an anti-social cow, I just gotta finish this book.

Lorraine went over to the sink behind Yvonne and filled the kettle and put it on. On her way past her friend she bent over her chair and filled her nostrils with the fragrance of Yvonne’s perfume and shampoo. She caught herself rubbing some of Yvonne’s shining blonde hair between her thumb and forefinger. – God, Yvonne, your hair’s gone really lovely. What shampoo is that you’ve been using?

– It’s just that Schwartzkopf stuff, she said, – you like it?

– Yeah, said Lorraine, feeling a funny dryness in her throat, – I do.

She went back over to the sink and unplugged the kettle.

– So you going clubbing tonight? Yvonne asked.

– Aw aye, I’m always up for clubbing, Lorraine smiled.

3 Freddy’s Bodies

There was nothing like the sight of a stiff to give Freddy Royle a stiffie.

– Bit bashed about this one, Glen, the path lab technician explained, as he wheeled the body into the hospital mortuary.

Freddy was finding it hard to maintain steady breathing. He examined the corpse. – She’s bain a roight pretty un n arl, he rasped in his Somerset drawl, – caar accident oi presumes?

– Yeah, poor cow. M25. Lost too much blood by the time they cut her out of the pile-up, Glen mumbled uncomfortably. He was feeling a bit sick. Usually a stiff was just a stiff to him, and he had seen them in all conditions. Sometimes though, when it was someone young, or someone whose beauty could still be evidenced from the three-dimensional photograph of flesh they had left behind, the sense of the waste and futility of it all just fazed him. This was such an occasion.

One of the dead girl’s legs was lacerated to the bone. Freddy ran his hand up the perfect one. It felt smooth. – Still a bit wahrm n arl, he observed, – bit too waarm for moi tastes if the truth be told.

– Eh, Freddy, Glen began.

– Oh zorry, me ol moite, Freddy smiled, reaching into his wallet and peeling off some notes which he handed over to Glen.

– Cheers, Glen said, pocketing the money and hastily exiting. Glen fingered the notes in his pocket as he walked briskly down the hospital corridor and took the lift to the canteen. This part of the ritual, the exchange of cash, left him elated and debased at the same time. He could never tell which emotion was the strongest. Why though, he reasoned, should he deny himself a cut if the rest of them
were
in on it? Those arseholes who had more than he ever would: the hospital trustees.

Yes, the trustees knew all about Freddy Royle, Glen reflected bitterly. They knew the real secrets of the chat-show host, the presenter of the lonely hearts television show,
From Fred With Love
, the author of several books, including
Howzat! – Freddy Royle On Cricket, Freddy Royle’s Somerset, Somerset With a Z: The Wit Of The West Country, West Country Walks With Freddy Royle
and
Freddy Royle’s 101 Magic Party Tricks
. Yes, those trustee bastards knew what this distinguished friend, this favourite caring, laconic uncle to the nation did with the stiffs they got in here. The thing was, Freddy brought millions of pounds into the place with his fund-raising activities. This brought kudos to the trustees, and made St Hubbin’s Hospital a flagship for the arm’s-length trusts from the NHS. All they had to do was keep
shtumm
and indulge Sir Freddy with the odd body.

Glen thought about Sir Freddy, thrusting his way to a loveless paradise with a piece of dead meat. In the canteen, he joined the line and examined the food on display. Glen decided against a bacon roll and had processed cheese instead. He thought of Freddy and the old necrophiliac joke: someday some rotten cunt will split on him. It wouldn’t be Glen though: Freddy paid too well for that. Thinking of the cash and what it could buy, Glen’s thoughts turned to AWOL at the SW1 Club tonight. She would be there – she often was on a Saturday – or at Garage City in Shaftesbury Avenue. Ray Harrow, one of the theatre technicians, had told him. Ray was into jungle; he had the same
modus operandi
as Lorraine. Ray was okay, he had lent Glen tapes. Glen couldn’t get into jungle, but he’d try for Lorraine. Lorraine Gillespie. Beautiful Lorraine. Student Nurse Lorraine Gillespie. He knew she worked hard: conscientious, dedicated on the ward. He knew she raved hard: AWOL, The Gallery, Garage City. What he wanted to know was how she loved.

When he came to the end of the line with his tray and paid the cashier, he saw the blonde nurse sitting at one of the tables. He didn’t know her name, all he knew of her was that she was Lorraine’s friend. By the look of things she was just starting her shift. Glen thought
about
sitting beside her, talking to her, perhaps even finding out about Lorraine through her. He moved over towards her, and then obeying a sudden nervous impulse, half-slipped and half-collapsed into a seat a couple of tables away. As he ate his roll he cursed his weakness. Lorraine. If he couldn’t work up the bottle to talk to her friend, how was he ever going to work up the bottle to talk to
her
?

Then she rose and smiled over at him as she passed him. His spirits lifted. The next time he’d talk to her, then the time after that he’d talk to her when she was
with Lorraine
.

When Glen returned to the ante-room, he heard Freddy next door in the mortuary. He couldn’t bear to look, but he listened at the swing doors. He heard Freddy’s gasps, – Wor, wor, wor, looks like a good un!

4 Admission

The ambulance arrived quickly, but it seemed a long time for Perky. He watched Rebecca gasp and groan on the conservatory floor. Self-consciously, he grabbed her hand. – Chin up, old girl, they’re on their way, he said once or twice.

– You’ll be right as rain, he told her, as the ambulance men loaded her into a chair, placed an oxygen mask over her face, and wheeled her into the back of the van. It was as if he was watching a silent film in which his own sounds of encouragement seemed like a badly imposed voice-over. Then Perky was aware of Wilma and Alan Fosley, watching the scene from over their hedge. – Everything’s fine, he assured them, – just fine.

The ambulancemen, in turn, gave Perky a similar reassurance that this would indeed be the case, intimating that the stroke looked a mild one. This contention carried a conviction that he found unsettling and it served to lower his spirits. Perky found himself hoping fervently that they were wrong and that a doctor would come up with a more negative evaluation.

He started to perspire heavily as he turned the options over in his mind:

The best scenario: she dies and I am minted in the will.

Next best: she is okay and continues to write, and promptly completes the latest regency romance novel.

He shuddered as he realised that he was in fact flirting with the worse-case scenario: Rebecca is incapacitated in some way, perhaps even reduced to a vegetable, incapable of writing but a drain on our resources.

– Aren’t you coming with us, Mr Navarro? one of the ambulancemen asked, his tone quite accusatory.

– You chaps go ahead, I’ll follow in the car, Perky replied sharply. He was used, in social situations, to giving orders to people from such a class, and was therefore riled by their presumption that he should do as
they
think appropriate. He looked over at the rose-bushes. Yes, they could do with a spraying. At the hospital there would be all the fuss and palaver of checking the old girl in. Yes, time for a spraying, surely.

Perky’s attention was arrested by the manuscript which lay on the coffee table. There was chocolatey vomit on the front page. With some distaste, he brushed the worst off with a handkerchief, exposing the bubbled, wet paper.

He opened its pages and started to read.

5 Untitled – Work In Progress (Miss May Regency Romance No. 14.)

Page
I

It only required the most modest of fires to heat the small, compact schoolroom in the old manse at Selkirk. This was considered a particularly advantageous state of affairs by the Minister of the parish, the Reverend Andrew Beattie, a man noted for his frugality
.

Andrew’s wife, Flora, matched this frugality with a lavish extravagance. She knew and accepted that she had married into reduced circumstances and that money was tight, but while she had learned to be what her husband constantly referred to as ‘practical’ in her day-to-day dealings, the essential extravagance of her spirit could not be broken by those circumstances. Far from disapproving, Andrew adored her all the more for it. To think that this wonderful and beautiful woman had given up fashionable society in London for the life he had to offer. It made him believe in the virtue of his calling and the purity of her love
.

Their two daughters, huddled in front of the fire, had inherited Flora’s extravagance of spirit. Agnes Beattie, a porcelain-skinned beauty, the elder at seventeen years, pushed back her raven hair to afford herself an unbroken view of the contents of
Ladies Monthly Museum. –
There is the most ravishing evening gown! Do look at it, Margaret, she exclaimed wildly, thrusting the page in front of her younger sister by one year, who was idly stoking the meagre coals in the fireplace, – a bodice of blue satin, fastened in front by diamonds!

Margaret sprang up and attempted to wrestle the paper from her sister’s grasp. Agnes tightened her grip, then her heart skipped a beat, from anxiety that the paper might tear, but she kept her tone admirably condescending as she laughed, – But dear sister, you are far too young to consider such things!

– Do, pray, give it me! Margaret implored her sister even as her own hold was loosening. In their frivolity, the girls failed to notice the entrance of their new tutor. The slender, spinsterly English woman pursed her lips and tutted loudly. – So this is the behaviour I must expect from the daughters of my dear friend Flora Beattie! I must think twice before absenting myself in the future!

The girls looked embarrassed, but Agnes detected the note of playfulness in the tutor’s reprimand. – But madam, if I am to be introduced to society, in London too, then I must consider my attire!

The woman looked at her. – Training, education and etiquette are more important qualities for a young lady in her introduction to polite society than the detail of the finery she wears. Do you imagine that your dear mama, or your father, the good Reverend, for all his austerity, would see you embarrassed in that way at London’s balls? Leave the consideration of your wardrobe in those capable hands, my girl, and turn your attention to more pressing matters!

– Yes, Miss May, Agnes said
.

That girl has an untameable streak, thought Miss May, just like her dear mama, the tutor’s dear old friend from many years ago – from the time, in fact, when Amanda May and Flora Kirkland were introduced to London society together
.

Perky slung the manuscript back onto the coffee table. – What a load of utter nonsense, he said out loud, then, – Absolutely fucking brilliant! The bitch is on form. She’ll make us another fucking fortune! He rubbed his hands together gleefully as he strode out into the garden towards the rose-bushes. Suddenly, a tumult of anxiety rose in his breast as he ran back into the conservatory and picked up the manuscript. He thumbed through it, to the back pages. It stopped at page forty-two and had, by page twenty-six, degenerated into an unintelligible series of stark sentences and ramshackle spidery notes in the margins. It was nowhere near finished.

I hope the old girl’s all right, Perky thought. He felt an uncontrollable urge to be with his wife.

6 Lorraine And Yvonne’s Discovery

Lorraine and Yvonne were preparing to go onto the wards. After their shifts they were going out to buy some clothes, because tonight they were hitting a jungle club where Goldie was headlining. Lorraine was slightly perturbed to find Yvonne still engrossed in her book. It was all right for her; she didn’t have Sister Patel on her ward. She was about to remonstrate with her friend and tell her to get a move on when the name of the author on the cover jumped out at her. She examined the book and the picture of a glamorous young woman adorning the back. It was a very old picture, and if it hadn’t been for the name she would not have recognised Rebecca Navarro.

– Fuckin hell! Lorraine’s eyes widened. – See that book you’re reading?

– Yeah? Yvonne looked at the glossy, embossed cover. A young woman in a bodice pouted in a dream-like trance.

– Ken her that wrote it? Her on the back?

– Rebecca Navarro? Yvonne asked, flipping it over.

– She was admitted to Dean, Ward Six, last night. She’d had a stroke!

– That’s wild! What’s she like?

– Dinnae ken … well, she’s fuck-all like that anyway! She seems a bit dotty tae me, but she’d just had a stroke though, eh?