Kissing Toads (35 page)

Oh shit . . .

When we took a break to get back to drinking, he started asking me the questions he'd never asked, the routine life-story stuff, except with Ash it didn't seem routine. I found myself telling him about Kyle, and quitting
Behind the News
, and even my disastrous leaving party. He laughed out loud when I described smashing the glassware. It felt strange to be pouring my heart out; except with Delphi, I'd always been the listener. I'd certainly never dumped my woes on Kyle. Though he would occasionally ask the right questions, he paid no attention to the answers. I thought: Ash is a good listener, he's sympathetic, like me and not like me. Not murmuring a prompt or interpolating with a verbal nudge the way I would have done, but using the ease of his silence, the gravitas of his expression, the sudden warmth in those cool, cool eyes. It perturbed me a little, as if he was using my own qualities against me. But I knew really that was nonsense. I recall thinking, somewhere around my third – or fourth – or possibly fifth – beer: I'm always going to remember this evening. The haphazard party, and being appreciated, and Ash. Especially Ash.

I was getting dangerously carried away.

At some point Delphi came over to tell me she was going to bed. ‘I've got to go to London tomorrow for a fitting with Maddalena,' she said. ‘You can manage without me for a day, can't you? I'll be back Thursday morning. Vanessa's booked me on early flights.' Vanessa was Delphi's PA, a latterday Sloan of effortless efficiency who worked on a part-time basis for a string of media celebs who didn't need an assistant full-time.

‘All right,' I said. ‘But you must get back quickly. We're laying out the maze before the end of the week.'

‘Promise,' she said, giving me a kiss and casting a rather hostile glance at Ash. I still wanted the background details of her plot with Harry, but it was obviously going to have to wait.

The party was winding down now, the way such parties do. There was no bar to close, no shortage of booze, but party-fatigue was kicking in, and the post-filming high was declining into the low of imminent goodbyes and unemployment. The tempo of the songs got slower, and the last of the celebrants malingered over their drinks, bemoaning their lot, or whatever else they wanted to bemoan. Cedric approached, plainly drunk, and asked Ash to dance.

‘One dance,' he said. ‘The last dance. One perfect fucking moment to carry in my 'eart till I die. Ruthie here won't mind, will you?'

I minded. I minded the end of my tête-à-tête with Ash, but I couldn't say so. Ash got up, giving me a smile that might have meant something, and might have meant nothing. Then he was dancing, the same leisurely stroll he had danced with me, arms latched loosely around Cedric's neck. They talked – seemed close – even intimate. I didn't think Ash was gay, but suddenly I wasn't sure – I wasn't sure of anything any more. Would a straight guy have danced like that with another man, chatting with him so carelessly, so comfortably? Wouldn't a straight guy have worried that anyone watching might have leaped to the wrong conclusions? But Ash wasn't worried – he wasn't the type. Gay or straight, he wouldn't have cared what anyone thought.

He doesn't care what
I
think, I realised.

I tried not to watch him, letting my gaze roam over the other malingerers: the birthday actress, now sunk in alcoholic gloom, admitting to Angus how awful it was to be forty-nine (I learned later she was fifty-five); Dirk and Morty, competing for the attention of one of the researchers; the actor with the hip-flask problem, now asleep in a chair. Alex and Brie were doing a slow shuffle in the dance floor area; Brie was leaning into him wearing a vacant expression which matched her dress, most of which wasn't there. She was much shorter than Alex and they looked slightly awkward, the way dancers do when there's a big height discrepancy. Ash and Cedric appeared far more graceful . . .

I mustn't watch, I mustn't
mind
, I mustn't think whatever I was thinking. I got up and left the hall, gravitating instinctively to the drawing room in search of a slug of something anaesthetic. Like chloroform. I could hear music playing, something I didn't recognise, a woman's voice singing in a foreign language or no language at all, sounding faintly Oriental, faintly operatic. In the doorway, I hesitated. HG was stretched out on the sofa, whisky glass in hand, listening with his eyes shut. Apart from the fact that his mouth was closed, he might have been asleep. I drew back, not wanting to intrude, but I must have made a slight noise. He opened his eyes and smiled at me.

‘You're busy,' I said. ‘I didn't mean . . .'

‘Come in.'

He unpeeled himself from the sofa, offered me a drink.

‘What's the music?' I asked.

‘It's a new Arthur Brown CD, made with some Tibetan singer who had to flee from the Chinese. You wouldn't remember Arthur; before your time. I knew him in the late sixties when he became a star. He left the business but we kept in touch, in a distant sort of way. Now, he's making a comeback.' The next track switched to something which was recognisably rock. I found myself accepting a vintage Armagnac which swirled around the bottom of a brandy bubble with the lazy smoothness of golden syrup.

‘I saw you talking to Dorian earlier,' HG continued. ‘He seems to like you.'

Too much, I thought with a twinge, but I didn't say it.

‘It's a difficult age, sixteen. Kids nowadays seem to have so many pressures: exam pressure, peer pressure, lifestyle pressure. The urge to conform is always strongest in your teens. And the urge to rebel. You need to be exactly like all the other teenagers and you need to be against anyone older. It's a formula. Mind you, Dorian's very clever. Much brighter than me. I've got O and A levels, though I don't advertise the fact. Bad for my image. But Dorian – he's a maths genius, good at physics and chemistry, brilliant with computers. I suppose he's a bit of a geek, but—'

‘You must be very proud of him,' I said.

‘Mm. We seem to get along. Of course, he doesn't much care for Basilisa, but then children never do like a stepmother, do they? They started off all right – believe it or not, she was great with him, but when he hit thirteen or fourteen things went downhill. Teen trauma. Like I said, the difficult age. Mel and Dilly, my daughters, were much worse. But I was a lot younger then and dealing with my own problems, and they'd lost Maggie when they were kids. They've sorted themselves out pretty well now. I think Dorian'll be all right.'

‘I'm sure he will.'

‘I'd like him to go to Oxbridge; he's got the brains for it. He's been on half-term this week, but he shuts himself up with the computer all the time. I used to think he was downloading porn – natural enough, at that age – so I got the machine monitored. Apparently, he's designed some game or other, has his own website.' HG sounded mildly stunned, as if his son had trekked into the Amazon jungle or composed a symphony for Martians. ‘He does porn, but not much. Bit worrying, really. Can't be healthy, immersing himself in all that techno stuff. He ought to be more interested in girls.'

‘I expect he is,' I said, reeling at the idea of a father who felt his son needed more pornography in his life. ‘But he wouldn't necessarily tell you, would he?'

‘Suppose not. Still, when I was sixteen that was all I thought about. And seventeen – eighteen – nineteen . . . you get the picture. I only wanted to play in a band because that was how you got the girls.'

‘Did it work?' I asked, unable to resist.

He gave a rueful kind of half laugh. ‘Much too well. Although . . . well, apart from Maggie, I never really met the right one. Basilisa was wonderful to begin with – so much fire and vitality, I thought she would keep me young, but these days it just wears me out. Now, I want the quiet life. Just to potter between here and the island, stay out of the spotlight, spend time with my favourite people. Fix up the garden, indulge in a few luxuries – just like anyone else my age.'

Absolutely, I thought. Fix up the garden, get in a TV crew to help, pop off to your own island every so often. Just like anyone else.

Celebrities, even the nicest ones, really do live in their own universe.

‘You'll go no more a-roving,' I said, meaning spiritually, not geographically.

‘You know Byron.' He looked pleased.

‘Yes, that's me. My song. Clever of you to realise. You're a very perceptive person; I've noticed that.' He changed the CD for some kind of jazz – the sound of a late-night bar when they're putting the chairs on the tables and drinking the last drink and the sax player just won't go home.

‘I'm writing a novel,' HG went on, with an air of originality. ‘I feel I've got to that period in my life when I've got something to say and, at last, the time to say it. So I thought I'd give it a go.'

There was an expectant pause.

‘About a rock star?' I said.

‘Not exactly. About a . . . musician. He has one or two hits, then declines into obscurity. His wife leaves him, his whole life becomes a pattern of constant failure and frustration. If it's autobiographical, then the hero represents my alter ego. The me that I might have been without success. He's a failure, but he has friends – a close-knit group of eccentrics who are always loyal to him. Then he meets a girl.'

‘Of course,' I said absent-mindedly.

‘Of course?'

‘Well, there wouldn't be any story if he didn't,' I improvised.

‘You said it. Anyhow, she's young, beautiful, caring. The quiet type. They fall deeply in love. Through her, he starts to rebuild his world. But she grew up in a housing estate on the edge of an area of industrial pollution, and she contracts leukaemia. Ironically, the company responsible for the pollution is owned by an old associate of Jordan's – my hero. Thirty years ago, this executive was a bright young whiz-kid with a record company, the company which catapulted Jordan to brief stardom then dropped him cold. He's become totally corrupted by his own success. Jordan's a failure, but his ideals have stayed pure. The girl dies tragically –'

‘They always do,' I murmured, but HG didn't register the remark.

‘– and he writes a song about it, a great song. It's a huge international hit and he becomes a star again. But fame destroys him. He's estranged from his old friends, and at the end he finds he's thrown back together with the man whose corruption and indifference led to his girlfriend's death.'

‘Does he kill himself?' I asked.

‘I'm not sure. I haven't decided.' He relieved me of my glass, which had emptied itself into my system without my noticing, and replenished it. ‘You know, you're the only person I've told about this. Apart from my agent and publisher, of course.'

‘I'm . . . privileged,' I stammered.

‘Nonsense,' he said gently. ‘You're just . . . a
very
nice girl.' As he returned my glass, his hand closed over mine. The light was dim, softening his face into timelessness. I saw there all the ghosts of his past: the fresh young star, the jaded cynic, the junkie – the ageing comeback kid, the retired pirate, the weary Casanova.
We'll go no more a-roving . . .
A superstar who dreamed of failure because it was a place he'd never been, a man with, perhaps, deep uncertainties buried beneath the lifelong insulation of super-status. And someone who got a book contract to write about them, and a TV programme to replant his flower beds, had his own island to get away from it all, his own castle in which to ponder life's little ironies. I smiled – I couldn't help it.

He kissed me.

A slow sort of kiss, lingering, not unpleasant. A kiss that was very sure of its welcome.

I found myself thinking, not ‘
I'm kissing Hot God
', but ‘
I'm kissing a man of sixty-seven
'. What was the line? ‘
Of more than twice her years, seam'd with a hundred scars . . .
' Elaine on Lancelot, I think.

It was enjoyable enough for me not to call a halt. HG put my glass down on the cabinet, slid his arms round me and drew me closer, all without breaking mouth contact. He really was a
very
smooth operator.

Then the inevitable happened. There were two doors to the drawing room, one open, one closed. Ash appeared in the open one – and stopped dead on the threshold. His beautiful face went white and still.

The other door was flung back with familiar impetuosity. ‘Where are you?' Basilisa demanded. ‘Darrling—'

She, too, stopped dead, even as I detached myself from HG's embrace. A range of expressions chased themselves across her face at lightning speed. Her eyes widened, narrowed, glittered; her lips parted, closed, thinned to a line, opened on a scream. The activity of her eyebrows was limited by Botox, but her massive hair, sleep-tousled, seemed to curl into snakes. And hiss.

‘So!' she cried. ‘
So!
It is not just that
puta de jardinera
, it is this – this –
cabrona
– this
zorra
! She is not even very pretty, but you don't care, no? As long as she smile at you, as long as she is willing! You cannot keep your
polla
in your pocket for five minutes! You are like all men – you follow your deek anywhere with a
coña
!'