Simply Divine (40 page)

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'Beakerful of the warm South?' asked Tom, proffering the carafe and crinkling his eyes at her in the candlelight.

As they talked, Jane could well believe he was a storyteller. His accounts of life on his Soho street were positively Dayglo in their luridness. He was a skilled listener too, she realised as he began delicately to probe her recent disastrous romantic history. Slowly and reluctantly at first, then willingly and eventually torrentially, Jane talked a lot about Nick and a little about Mark. Tom listened intently, rolling his large, candlelit eyes sympathetically now and then. For his own part, he said little about his love life. And Jane could never quite find the right moment or phrases to start asking.

'Coffee?' Tom asked, as the lovestruck waitresses loomed after the homemade tiramisu.

'No, thank you,' said Jane. 'Actually, I'd better go,' she added reluctantly as Tom produced a fistful of grubby notes out of his pocket.

'My treat,' he insisted when Jane started to scrabble for her purse.

'It's been lovely to see you again,' she said. Please ask me back for a drink, her eyes begged him.

'Come back for a drink,' said Tom right on cue. 'It's only round the corner, and you can call a cab from there.'

'All right,' said Jane, her eyes turned determinedly aside from the endless fleet of empty, available cabs clearly visible through the restaurant windows. Her legs trembled as she got to her feet.

Soho seemed a city of light as they walked through it. It was raining, and the neon signs of the restaurants and bars were brilliantly reflected in the wet pavements. Figures hurried by in the hissing rain, intent on their own business, silent and hooded as monks. Taxis honked and hustled

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their way through the traffic-crowded streets. Tom, apparently almost unconsciously and so delicately she could scarcely feel it, took her hand in his as they turned off Old Compton Street. Delirious happiness flooded through Jane's veins. She wanted nothing else in the world.

Someone else, however, did. The thin, desperate face of a young girl gazed pleadingly up at them as they passed the dark and rotting recess of an abandoned restaurant doorway. 'Here you are,' Tom muttered, stopping. Jane heard the rattle of change as he unearthed a handful of silver and put it gently into the dirty, proffered palm which protruded from the end of a plaster cast. 'Can I sign your cast?' asked Tom, smiling at the beggar.

'You can sign me wherever you like, darlin'.'

Camilla was on duty as they arrived at the flat. Her black plastic outfit shone in the street lights and a cigarette hung from between her wet, red-slicked lips. As they approached, Jane felt under scrutiny.

'You look very glamorous,' Tom said to her cheerfully. 'How's business?' He spoke to Camilla, Jane noticed, with as much courtesy and respect as if she had been a doctor or a barrister.

'Booming,' said Camilla, in her ironic, well-spoken voice. 'The good wives of Woking seem to have been having a lot of bedtime headaches recently. Not to mention,' she added, leaning forward conspiratorially, raising her eyebrows and shooting a loaded look at the red-lit window above her, 'the good wives of Westminster.'

Inside Tom's flat, Jane looked around in surprise. 'Tom! You've tidied up.' The papers were still there, but they were heaped rather than scattered. The duvet, although unrepentantly unironed, was actually pulled over the mattress and the pillows had a suspiciously plumped-up

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look about them. Had he expected her to come back with him? Oh, what did it matter anyway? It was a bit late to play hard to get now.

Jane avoided the chair and lowered herself on to the edge of the mattress while Tom lit candles and poured two tots of whisky into glasses. A low, calm swell of music swirled gently into the air. 'What's this?' Jane asked, gazing at the flickering flame through her glass and admiring the way the amber fluid turned to liquid gold.

'Vaughan Williams' Fifth,' said Tom, lighting a cigarette and settling himself against the pillows. Jane felt the space between them quiver. 'Preludio.' The haunting, insistent, plaintive notes increased in intensity.

Jane closed her eyes. 'It's lovely,' she said, aware it was a horribly inadequate description. She had, after all, said the same thing barely two hours ago about the San Lorenzo chicken. 'I'm afraid I don't know anything about music,' she added apologetically.

'Well, all you really have to know is whether you like it or not,' said Tom simply. 'I like this because it's very calm and relaxing. It's one of those pieces that puts into notes all that longing you could never put into words.' He said it without a hint of theatricality, as if merely stating a fact. Who or what was he longing for? Jane wondered. Gazing silently into the middle distance, drawing on his cigarette, Tom did not enlighten her.

As much to relieve incipient cramp as to break the tension, Jane got to her feet. For once, her knees did not crack like pistol shots. She crossed to look at the mass of books piled against the wall at the back of the room. It was her turn to examine his library now.

Suddenly, a finger lifted her hair from the back and she felt a warm mouth exploring the nape of her neck. Her

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spine exploded into shivers. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to blissful oblivion as Tom gently nibbled her ear.

'I didn't know what to say to you yesterday,' murmured Tom. 'You see, I had spent all this time persuading myself that you were living with your boyfriend and there was no point in trying.'

Damn, thought Jane, her fists clenching. What sort of deluded fool had she been to want to move in with Nick in the first place? It had ruined everything ever since.

'But then you came round here and I thought you'd come to tell me it was over with him,' Tom mumbled, 'that somehow you'd found me, but you said you had come from the magazine to do an interview, which, naturally, rather threw me, and then you
didte\\
me it was over with him, but I didn't know what to think by then. If you understand what I mean.' Tom paused. 'I'm not sure that I do, though.'

Jane smiled and did not answer as his lips started nibbling round her cheekbones. She stood stock still, terrified to move in case he stopped. Tom gently turned her round and pushed her trembling lips apart with his own. He smelt of soap and tasted of salt, thought Jane, melting into his mouth and arms as her legs gave way beneath her. Pressing her gently to him, Tom pushed a warm hand beneath her Joseph and fondled her stiffening nipple.

'I've wanted you ever since that night,' he breathed. 1 just couldn't stop thinking about you. I thought you must have forgotten me ages ago, that you must have thought of it as just a one-night stand. Which it was, of course. Only it wasn't.'

'No, it wasn't,' Jane murmured, clutching his rough-soft hair in her fingers.

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'But will you respect me in the morning?' Tom muttered as he slid the exploring hand into her knickers. 'I certainly hope not,' murmured Jane.

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Chapter 25

Jane had not slept all night. It had seemed a good idea at the time; in fact, it had seemed a crime to do anything else. But now she was paying the price. Concentrating on the recondite detail of the next issue's fashion pages was almost more than she could manage. Just what was Tiara talking about?

'What do you mean, boars' pelvises?' Jane felt a migraine coming on. This meeting had been going on for an hour already and there seemed no end in sight.

'Boar's pelvises. Alessandro uses boars' pelvises in his hats. He's, er, the sort of Damien Hirst of millinery,' said Tiara, proffering some dim Polaroids featuring a pale, rickety, bony structure wearing another on her head.

'Don't tell me. He's the next pig thing,' sighed Jane, hoping it wouldn't catch on. There were quite enough boneheads around in fashion as it was. Tiara tightened her lips. Her sense of humour, thought Jane, had gone the way of her puppy fat and original facial features. Wiped away without trace. Perhaps that was what the Glamourtron did to you.

'We're planning a spread on the couture, of course,' said Tiara.

Of
 
course,
  
thought
  
Jane.
  
To
  
justify
 
Victoria's

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continuing absence at fashion shows, if nothing else. Yesterday Victoria had returned from Paris Fashion Week and declared it the most tedious experience of her life. Then she had promptly boarded Concorde for the New York shows.

Tiara produced more Polaroids and spread them on the big desk before Jane. 'These are the latest batch. Amazing, aren't they?'

In one, a topless, emaciated woman wearing what looked like a gas mask and the ripped bottom half of a ballgown was staggering up the runway with a Doc Marten on one leg and a moonboot on the other. In another, a woman was wearing what looked like a green hospital gown. Tiara was right. Amazing was the word.

'Couture really is astonishing, isn't it?' muttered Jane. 'I mean, all those customers at the shows paying upwards of fifty thousand pounds for something they'll only wear once.'

'What do you mean?' asked Tiara indignantly. 'Some of them wear it
twice.'

After the fashion meeting, Jane wandered out into a features department more deserted than the
Marie Celeste
after a bomb scare. 'Where's Tash?' she asked.

'Gone to a wedding,' said Tish, as if this was the most natural thing to do on a Tuesday morning. But then, at
Fabulous,
Jane supposed it was. No one here went to anything as tacky as a Saturday marriage. She looked at the clock. Half past twelve. Seven long, miserable, endless hours before she met Tom for the concert at the Barbican he had promised her to start her musical education.

Unclamping herself from his warm body that morning had been like leaving part of herself behind. Too happy to sleep, she had lain there wide awake all night, gazing

through the gaping curtains to the dark blue sky in which passing planes glowed like slow-moving stars. Light-headed with tiredness, Jane closed her eyes and escaped into the inner world where she could see him, smell him, feel him again. How on earth did people in love manage to get any work done at all? she wondered. How did they fit anything else in?

She reluctantly dragged herself back to the film magazines and the burning question of her next front cover. Most of the 'ones to watch' sections seemed very excited about an American actress called Jordan Madison who was variously described as famously moody, notoriously uninterviewable, utterly beautiful and star of a string of indie films of which the latest,
Fish Food,
had been a huge critical and cult success.

'Oh yah, Jordan Madison,' said Tosh, passing Jane's desk en route to the fax. She rolled an over-made-up eye at the full-page pictures of the frail-bodied actress with her colt's legs and long, flat, black hair. 'You'll never get her. She
never
does interviews.'

Jane immediately picked up the telephone and began placing calls with and sending faxes to Jordan's LA press agent, New York press agent and the New York press agent's LA press agent. She knew a challenge when she heard one.

As the last note hung in the air, the tears continued to flow uncontrollably down Jane's cheeks. Tom, silent beside her, gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. Jane cast a quick, blurred glance around and saw that almost everybody else in the concert hall was sitting ramrod straight with eyes as dry as the desert. Had they no souls? she wondered. Or, more likely, had she had one too many resistance-weakening gin and tonics before the beginning

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of the concert? 'It was so beautiful,' she gulped afterwards as Tom handed her yet another large gin and tonic from the bar. 'It was the saddest thing I've ever heard. What was it called?'

'Pavane pour une infante defunte'
said Tom. 'Pavane for a dead princess. Ravel used to make his students play it, and yell at them that he'd written a pavane for a dead princess, not a dead pavane for a princess.' He grinned and kissed her on the tip of her nose. 'Cheer up. Let's go and have that romantic dinner you promised me.' The lyrical moment was shattered in an instant as Jane remembered the mess her flat was in.

Having sent Tom round to the off-licence to buy some wine, Jane let herself quickly into the hall. Without even pausing to take her coat off, she rushed frantically around tidying up heaps of clothes, shoving her tampons and Ladyshave into the bathroom cupboard and spraying perfume liberally over the pillows.