House of Bells (2 page)

‘There is. I know. He thinks it'll keep people out. Which would technically include you too – but, as it happens, what I also know is that there are at least half a dozen people in there already.
They
think closing the door will keep the smell of dope in, but it's a party. There's no such thing as private. Everyone knows.'

‘Grace. Fetch the drinks. Leave the people to me.'

So she did that, coming back with one bottle of Pol Roger and two glasses, because she was damned if she would let Tony or anyone catch her drinking a hostess cocktail. He was absolutely right, of course, that was exactly what she should be doing; but if she got tipsy and misbehaved, it would only add to her legend. People would talk,
The Daily Messenger
and other papers would gossip, and Dr Barrett's party would be discussed all over. Even more than it was going to be already. It would be epic; he'd be thrilled.

And one thing was for sure, certain safe. Whoever she went home with tonight, it wouldn't be Tony Fledgwood. So it didn't really matter, did it? If she got sozzled?

She found the study door ajar, the corridor outside more of a squeeze than it had been. Someone pinched her bottom as she wriggled by, but that was only to be expected. Almost to be played for, it almost counted as a score. Bruises only rise on living skin; she was a survivor, she could wear them with pride.
See me? I was there, and now I'm here. I had that, all of that; now I have this. These. I fell a long way, but I'm still alive, still breathing. Still bleeding. See?

Someone had thrown a chiffon scarf across the desk lamp; she slipped through the door into reddish light, the colour of sunsets. And the smell of bonfires, that too: a harshness in the air, a texture like tweed as she breathed it, rough and outdoorsy and scratching at her throat. A roach still burning in a brass incense-holder, the rising twist of smoke almost deliberately ironic.

All those people in the corridor must have been the people in here before. Somehow Tony had chased them out. He sat waiting for her, solitary and almost imperial in this dusky light, on a white leather couch with his arm along the backrest. It wasn't an invitation so much as an expectation. She would sit there beside him, and his arm would come around her shoulders as a matter of course, and—

No.

It was his right arm that lay flung along the sofa-back, and he was devoutly right-handed. She held out the bottle to him, and of course he reached to take it with that hand. She stood waiting while he fussed with wire and foil and cork, while he cast the odd amused glance up at her, while neither of them said a thing. When the bottle spurted foam, she was ready with a glass to catch it as he tipped. When both glasses had been filled and topped up as the froth subsided, she dragged a worn red pouffe out from under the desk and sat on that. Deliberately at his feet, to let him feel even more like an emperor dispensing favours; deliberately not within the ambit of his arm. Giving herself a little leeway, space for some feelings of her own.

He said, ‘Well, then. How've you been, Grace?'

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. No, wait – you
do
know. If you read your own paper, you do.'

‘I know what we've been saying about you. That's not the same thing.'

‘Well,' she said. ‘Thanks for admitting that, at least.'

‘Be fair,' he said, worrying at his moustache with his finger. That was new, of course. Previously, he would have taken his cap off and worried at his hair. ‘If you don't talk to us, we have to take what we can get from other people. And we haven't been as hard on you as the rest of Fleet Street is. Have we?'

‘No, Tony. No, you haven't.' Small mercies, something to be grateful for: a paper that was almost on her side. That would listen to her, at least. If the lawyers would only let her talk. She could have sold her story and made some real money, if she'd been allowed to.
The Dentist, The Arms Dealer and the Diplomat: Jailed Call-Girl Spills All.
Or:
‘It Was Only A Game,' Says Playgirl.
Or:
The Chink in Her Amours
, if they wanted to be clever.

Instead – well, this. Hat-check girl, trading on her notoriety. And snatching the chance to sit at Tony's feet, just for ten minutes, when she should have been working the rooms, fetching drinks and laughing at jokes she didn't think funny and dancing with oily strangers, waiting for one of them to grip her wrist and claim her for the night. It was understood, even by those who didn't know she was being paid for it, that was what she was there for. She and all the other girls, but herself particularly. She was that kind of girl. Everyone knew it.

Still, that kind of girl was sure to be flighty and unreliable, not always where she should be or doing what she was paid for. And besides, Tony was a guest here, and a significant one. Barrett couldn't complain if she spent ten minutes closeted alone with him. Or if she spent an hour. Or if he was the one who took her home . . .

No. Not that. Never again. She'd been quite clear about that, and so had his father.

‘So. How are you, pet? Really?'

That shrug was becoming automatic, apparently. She stilled it, and found herself staring down at the bubbles in her glass. At least something was light and frothy and on the rise, the way she used to think life was. Her life, especially: she hadn't ever thought much about anyone else's, until that was all she had to think about, when it was gone.

It was hard to talk, apparently, even to him. The longer she waited, the more her shoulders hunched under the weight of all that silence, all those words unsaid.

He outwaited her, which was just mean. At last – talking to her knees, because she could, apparently, still not talk to him – she said, ‘I hate it. All of it. All of this,' with one wild champagne-spilling gesture which might as well have been a gesture back through time to the girl she used to be, when she used to spill champagne for the sheer gorgeous hell of it. ‘I hate being the party girl that people pay for, because it gets their parties in the paper. I hate being so desperate I'll go to bed with anyone for a hundred quid and a kind smile – and, actually, don't bother about the smile. I
hate
that. I hate the way everyone thinks it, and I hate the fact that it's true.'

‘Actually,' he said, ‘what everyone thinks is that you don't care what you do now.'

‘That's true, too. At least, that I'll do anything for money. Why not?' After these last years, why would she even hesitate? ‘But no, I do still care. I just try not to show it. You won't give me away, will you, Tony?'

‘Never,' he said. ‘Not give you away, and not sell you either. I will use you, though, if you'll let me. If you'll do anything for money, will you do a job for me?'

That shrug was becoming harder every time. She really, really wanted to say no.
Not for you, Tony love. Not you. Please don't ask me.

But it was too late, and so she managed to shrug at him with her poor overburdened shoulders, and she managed to say, ‘Yes, sure. Why not, if the money's right?'

‘Money's not an issue,' he said.

She snorted. ‘Speak for yourself, love.'

‘No, I'm serious. You can have all the resources of Fledgwood Enterprises at your back, if you need them.'

She blinked, sipped, said, ‘What is it, then? This job?' Not hat-check girl at one of his father's parties, that was for sure.

‘It's for the
Messenger
. Undercover work, an investigation.'

‘What? You're bonkers. I'm no bloody journalist.'

‘No – but you are a girl who needs to hide. Or you could be. It's the perfect cover, sweetheart. If you're blown, it's just all the more convincing. And you'd be out of London, a long way away from all of this. No one's going to forget about you, I'm not saying that – but, well. Nine days' wonder, you know?'

‘More like nine months,' she said; and then heard herself, realized what she'd said, started to cry. It wasn't at all what she'd meant; she was just trying to be bitterly clever, the way she did when she was trying to keep up with Tony. But that was a hopeless enterprise in any case, and it had led her to walk flat-footed into the heart of sorrow. Nothing new there. She despised herself for many reasons – every good reason, and quite a few that were no good at all but she used them anyway – and this was one of the best: that she tried to be slick and tripped herself every time.

She wasn't clever enough to be any use to Tony. She couldn't save herself, let alone help anyone else. Or expose them. She wanted to say so, but talking was all manner of hard, too much to manage while she wept; and when he passed her a hankie that only made her more incoherent because she'd never been any good at gratitude.

‘Oh, keep the sodding thing,' he snapped, when she tried absurdly to hand it back to him. Or maybe he'd said ‘sodden'; she really wasn't sure. And then, ‘Keep it,' he said, ‘and go home. Meet me for oysters at noon, and I'll tell you what I want.'

‘I can't,' she said, gulping. ‘I can't go home. Dr Barrett's paying me to be here . . .'

‘How much?'

‘What?'

‘How much is he paying you? A hundred, did you say? Here.' A sheaf of folded notes, thrust into her fingers, uncounted by either one of them. ‘Just go home, Grace. Or do I need to take you?'

No. No, not that. Never that. He needed not to see where home was now; that was suddenly rather urgent.

As she hurried downstairs, she realized that she'd left her coat behind, but never mind. Also that she hadn't actually said thank you. Oddly – for someone who was no good at gratitude – that seemed to matter rather more.

As she left, she heard her name called from across the street. Stupidly, she lifted her head to look, and the camera's flash caught her full in the face like a blow. That would be Tony's tame photographer; that would be her all over tomorrow's front page, then. She'd meant to slip out the back way, and forgot.

Tony never forgot anything, and never missed his chance. Whatever he asked for tomorrow, tonight he had just what he wanted: a notorious good-time girl with her mascara smeared down her cheeks, scuttling out of a trendsetter's party unusually early and unusually alone. Of course there was a story in that. Rampant speculation was the same thing as news. Friendship was a tool like any other. He would lend her his handkerchief and offer her the hope of escape and still send her out of the front door looking like this, still use her face tonight to sell his paper in the morning. Of course he would. She would never expect anything else.

It wasn't even betrayal, when he was so upfront honest about it. Tony used people without a second thought; everyone knew. If he liked you he'd be kind about it, in person and in print, but he'd still tell the story. Sell the story. He'd use his own wife, if he had one. He'd use his child, if . . .

Oh. Damn. Now she was crying again, and that photographer was still on her heels and flashing away. Tony would be seeing his own hankie on his own front page, then.

The sound of her own footsteps underlay all her dreams these days. Walking and walking: sharp heels on city streets, rapid and determined, getting her there. It was all she knew how to do, to keep moving. She always walked when she could. Head down, hood up, on her way. Sometimes she would walk all night, sooner than go home.

Home meant stopping, stillness, quiet. Bed. All of those were terrible to her. And no more than she deserved, her punishment. She always did have to go home in the end. Just as she always read the papers, sooner or later. They were her punishment too.

Tony was her affliction, the one sorrow that she didn't think she'd earned. There always had to be something extra, the free gift at the bottom of the cereal packet. She still dug her hand in to grope for those, like a little kid. He was like that, like the aching tooth that your tongue couldn't keep away from.

Oysters meant Soho. Soho meant putting on a face; you never knew who you might meet, only that you were sure to meet someone. Which would be why Tony had chosen it, to get more mileage out of her. Yet more. To some people she was poison, but it never did a young man any harm to be seen out and about with poison on his arm. Nor an editor, nor an heir. With Tony you never knew quite which game he was playing, which hat he wore beneath his trendy cap. Which face he was showing to the world, or why.

Herself, she had only the one face to show. It took an hour to paint on, even after she'd done her hair; and then a headscarf went on to hide the hair, and she did what she could to hide her face too, head down and walking briskly, always moving, not even pausing at a light. If the traffic was against her she'd just carry on, miss her turn and go out of her way, walk further than she needed to. She'd cross three sides of a square rather than stand still and be trapped in the world's stare, feel that moment of recognition happen, wait breathless for whatever might come next. The crow of triumph or the impertinent questions or the savage accusations, they were all equally unbearable, though she did in fact bear them all when she had to. Even the silent cold shoulder hurt, even while she welcomed it: the best of everything that's awful.

Mostly, people just stared. She'd been through the range of responses – she'd tried staring back; she'd tried, ‘What are you staring at?'; she'd tried a V-sign and a vicious tongue and a regal mocking wave – and nothing worked to her comfort. Now she ignored them stoutly, eyes on the middle distance once she'd been spotted. Hide until they found her, yes, head down and scuttle onward, but never let them see her try to hide thereafter. Never gift them an easy victory, never show her shame.

In Soho, for oysters – well. No hope of hiding there. She'd just have to be brazen, the way everyone thought she was anyway. Shameless.

She could hate Tony for doing this to her, except – well. He was Tony. What was the point?