Fog Heart (2 page)

‘Roz.'

My banes are buried in yon kirkyard

    
Sae far ayont the sea,

And it is but my blithesome ghaist

    
That's speaking now to thee.

‘Yes, love?'

‘Next time…'

‘Don't ask that.'

‘Please. Roz…'

Why is it so easy to beg for what you know you'll never get? The sheer perverse pleasure of being refused. You're always safe in choosing the pain you know.

‘Don't ever ask that of me.' Roz swirled her drink. ‘Your talent is special. Exceptional.'

‘It's not a talent.' A shout, but plaintive, and the fight was gone by now. ‘I don't want it any more.' A whimper.

Roz let it pass and they were silent for a while.

–
Her throat, tightening
–

‘I felt him,' Oona said suddenly. ‘A man's hands around my neck. He was strangling me. I don't know who he is. That was the only thing I did feel out there in the water, and it happened again, just now.'

Roz stirred with interest. ‘He was strangling you?'

‘I believe so, yes.' Oona shrugged. ‘Someone.'

‘You're making it all up,' Roz decided impatiently. ‘I wish you wouldn't do this to me, Oona. It's so distressing.'

‘Sorry. But it's real enough to me.'

‘This whole thing, it's what you think you'd
like
to happen, because you didn't make it today.'

‘True.'

‘Honestly, you can be so hurtful.'

‘I don't mean to be.'

‘Little sister…'

Roz didn't sound bitter or angry, but stoical, pained. Oona was sorry she was doing this to her. The vodka helped her feel a lot better, quieting her mind, but it also made it easier for her to say certain things she otherwise wouldn't.

‘I don't mean to be anything.'

‘Don't talk like that.'

Oona sipped her vodka and lit another cigarette, loving the way they made her feel – and not feel. It must be said, you do have this talent. Not for living, not for dying – just a horrid little talent. So be it. But the time will come when …

The glow-worm o'er grave and stone

    
Shall light thee steady;

The owl from the steeple sing,

    
‘Welcome, proud lady.'

PART I

1

The show was a bit of a disappointment, but Oliver always enjoyed being back in London. There were no real beauties to be had and he couldn't find much that he felt utterly compelled to get. No surprise: he knew that the best stamps always went to auction, and three or four times a year he had his dealer in New York buy or sell a truly special item for him.

Stamps were only a sideline with Oliver. But they had an aura of beauty and serenity, and to be surrounded by them in a place as large as Olympia was soothing indeed. The show just happened to coincide with a visit on other business, and he couldn't pass it up. Besides, the pleasure of the hunt was rich in itself, and did not always have to culminate in a rare find or a spectacular catch.

Oliver checked his watch and made his way to the bar, which was starting to fill up. He had a large Dewar's. He felt edgy in a good way. He was back in his city again. After Cambridge, he had come to London, managed a band that became a fair success for a year or two (he still received modest royalty cheques), invested in a label that continued to prosper, imported American jeans and selected lots of clothing that sold well, and in time he got into several other business ventures. Some were a little less profitable than others, but none lost money. He had a good nose for a fair risk.

Oliver was still, essentially, a maverick, an inspired dabbler who got by on his instincts, but by now he could not conceive of giving up his freedom for a more predictable and secure business career. Besides, he didn't need a regular paycheque.

Now he wanted to do something. There was a party for the Limehouse Knights, a fairly new non-retro neo-post-ska ska band, currently on a roll in the UK, which should be fun – but that was later in the evening.

Oliver finished his drink and left Olympia. It was only a short walk back to the house. He let himself in. Nick and Jonna were off somewhere in the Camargue, supposedly scouting out locations for television ads. Which they were undoubtedly doing now and then, in the odd moments when they weren't busy eating, drinking and screwing their creative brains out. Lucky old Nick and Jonna – well, Nick anyway.

It was a shame to miss them this time around. He liked them both very much. They were long-time friends who ran a successful little film production company. Oliver had the use of their home in Kensington while he was in London. It was on a short terrace, set back from the High Street, overlooking Edwardes Square at the rear. It was actually the kind of house Oliver had wanted to own years ago, when he lived in London.

Now that he could afford to, of course, he didn't. He lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, nice enough, admittedly, and New York was a useful base for his many activities. But whenever he was at home for any length of time Oliver found himself trying to come up with reasons to be somewhere else.

Life on the road, no doubt a throwback to those crazy eleven months he'd spent driving the Bombsite Boys around Britain in the van, a different venue every night, dance halls, raucous pubs and grungy rock bars from Glasgow to Portsmouth. Rotten food, empty sex, endless drink, constant bitching, ego wars, troublesome cops and stroppy club owners who invariably refused to pay in full the agreed amount. Crewe, Derby, Slough, Blackburn, Cheadle, Poole, Brighton, Wolverhampton, Cardiff and too many others – oh, yes, Oliver could still remember every wretched stop on that hideous, never-ending tour.

Best year of his life, really.

He called Carrie, but she was out of the office. Lunchtime in New York, and so to be expected.

Oliver took off his shoes, sat in the large leather armchair and watched the lines of traffic down on the High Street. Should he get another Scotch? Nick had an excellent selection of single malts. Later. He shut his eyes and slept for exactly forty-five minutes, an old trick he had mastered on the road trip.

He took a hot shower, dressed and then tried Carrie again. Now it appeared that she would be out of the office on business for the rest of the afternoon. No matter. He should try to get on better terms with the receptionists there, but they stayed for only a month or two and then left. Hopeless.

Tomorrow he had a late-morning flight to Munich, to keep the vastly talented and desperately insecure Marthe Frenssen in line. They had so much to accomplish before someone else discovered the amazing things she could do with raw flax and linen weaves.

So this was his night on the town. Oliver had a vindaloo at a nearly empty Indian place on Abingdon Road, and then took a cab to Piccadilly. The Esquire was a bit drearier than it had seemed on his last visit. He downed a short and left.

Things were much livelier at the Miranda, on Kingly Street. The doorman recognized him, or at least pretended he did. Inside, downstairs, the late-night crowd was beginning to gather. Here was the old London Oliver knew and, in a way, almost adored. There was something vaguely seedy about it, and yet it had a kind of low glamour. The décor was out of date by a couple of decades but the place was so dark and smoky you didn't notice. The food was hardly memorable, but the floor-show made up for it.

The women were young, pretty and well shaped, and when they weren't busy dancing they mingled without being pushy. They came from places like Southampton and Reading and Peterborough. They wanted to enjoy the fast life in London, have torrid affairs with exciting young men on the make, make some money, catch a break, and, eventually, when they grew tired of it all, land a reasonably reliable gent who had a job in the City and a deposit on a lovely mock-Tudor in one of the better parts of Surrey. If he owned the house and already had a wife installed, that was acceptable too, as long as he could afford to dislodge the incumbent and not lose everything in the process. Hardly any of these women had the bad luck of falling in love to the tune of a net financial loss.

The men were mid-range business types, entrepreneurs, hearty marketeers treating their out-of-town customers, has-beens with a modicum of buoyancy left, villains with their docile flunkeys and dangerous apprentices, and a few deep-pocketed old geezers in for some genteel slap and tickle. It was a crowd that could be merry and loud or strangely tense, but was seldom merely dull.

Oliver fancied himself somewhat apart from the others. They were regulars, and he was an outsider who dropped in from time to time. The club was part of their normal routine, whereas for him it was an occasional rest-stop. He chatted with some of the women, but he didn't buy them a drink from the gilt-edged suckers' menu. He usually ended up discussing markets and trade with one or two businessmen, and he often got a useful indication of how the trends were going before it appeared as an official fact in the
FT
indexes. Most of these men had had their hopes broken more than once, and would again, keeping at it until the day they fell down for good. He knew that what separated him from them was largely a matter of luck.

Oliver stayed a little over an hour. A waste of time, perhaps, and yet it didn't bother him. On the contrary, visiting this club always seemed to make him feel better, in some way he couldn't quite understand. The Miranda was a lingering pocket of myth, the London of the fifties and sixties, the London of Ruth Ellis, the Krays, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, of Rachman and his thuggish winklers, a London that stretched from John Christie to the Beatles and the Stones. By the time Oliver had begun to hear of it late in his childhood it had been fading into dubious legend, and he'd always had the feeling that he'd missed something.

He gave the taxi driver a card with the address in Limehouse and sat back for the ride. He still had good connections in the music industry, and on most trips to London he could expect to be invited to at least one party. The music business was ever hard and merciless. Denmark Street rules still applied. A kid could write a string of hit singles and still have to scrounge for the cost of a pint. You lived on beans on toast, a squirt of sauce, and by the time you got your hands on money real enough to put in a bank account, you were ancient history. Make way for the new. Oliver was happy to be out of it on a day-to-day basis, and the only thing he missed was the fun of watching unvarnished kids make new music before the grind wore them out.

The party was in a converted warehouse, although what it had been converted to was hard to tell. The crowd was large and many more people were streaming in. The stereo system was cranked up high. There were long tables of food and barrels of quality beer. Say what you want about record companies, but they still knew how to throw a proper piss-up. Oliver wandered around aimlessly for a while, spotting old hands like Marianne Faithfull, Dave Davies, Brian Ferry and a bespangled Gary Glitter.

Eventually he caught up with Ian. Ian was his contact, the name to give at the door. Years ago, he had been a scruffy kid from Woking who couldn't quite master rhythm guitar. But he was bright and eager, and Oliver had given him a useful nudge at the right time. Now Ian was a highly regarded studio soundman, about due for his first major production job. He would probably have found his way there anyhow, but he was eternally grateful to Oliver. People with memory were rare in the business.

They swapped bits of personal news and work talk, and got up to date with each other. It had been three months since Oliver's last visit. As usual they vowed to have lunch or dinner the next time, definitely, schedules permitting.

Oliver didn't mind being left on his own. He picked at the mounds of shrimp and smoked salmon, he sipped Greene King beer and wandered around idly, nodding to some of the same magazine hacks he used to court in an effort to win column inches for his band. They still scoffed free nosh and booze frantically.

He skimmed the surface of the party. After a while, he sat down in an overstuffed old armchair, one of several that were scattered around the perimeter of the huge room. Within a minute or two a young woman came along and perched on its fat arm. She leaned back and sighed. ‘I hope you don't mind.'

‘Not at all,' he said.

‘Only my feet are killing me.'

‘Do you want to take the seat and I'll take the arm?'

‘Oh, you are sweet.'

They traded places, and she promptly rested her head against his body, just above the hip. She fanned herself with the press booklet that told you more than you would ever want to know about the Limehouse Knights. She was on the tall side, a little skinny and angular. She had short hair and a short skirt, long legs and small breasts. Her name was Becky Something-Something. She was an assistant features editor at a glossy women's magazine. Music was part of her turf. She loved London, loved the scene, got ten invites a week and went to every one of them. Oliver smiled. He knew what it was like to be in your early twenties in London, to connect, to plug into the action. You really
live
and your life is electric, even if you're only one of the minor players on the fringe – as this girl was.

Why tell her how soon it jades and fades? Perhaps she'll be one of the lucky few and for her it won't. She wouldn't believe him, anyway.

Oliver got her a fresh drink. Becky seemed mildly impressed when she heard that he was part-owner of a record label, and she promised to see that future Redbird releases were reviewed in her magazine.

She was even more impressed when he told her he lived in New York and did a little import-export in the rag trade. Exotic shirts and jeans were acceptable. Becky's father, it turned out, had made a fortune on plastic macs, and they were definitely not.