The Spoiler (29 page)

Alistair resumed his inventory of grievances.

“And now they’re rearranging our shift system so—”

Suddenly the
Psst!
team were on their feet, roaring their approval. Tamara pushed back her chair and whooped. It was Alistair, the parking-space soliloquist. Her dull dinner partner was the toast of the ballroom, king of the moment. As he stood up, acknowledging the shouts and cheers of congratulation, Tamara saw that she had been unfair. His modesty was attractive—he was more surprised than anyone else in the room by the announcement—and as he walked towards the stage to pick up his award for Picture Editor of the Year (Supplements), his slight frame and awkward smile seemed endearingly boyish. He really was not so bad looking.

The prize giving was winding down. The shouts and whoops had died away as diners moved among tables, congratulating winners they had mocked from the floor only half an hour ago and embracing old enemies, on their way to more unbuttoned celebrations at the long bar outside the ballroom. The real business of the evening was about to begin. Bobby offered to escort Honor to the hotel entrance and put her in a taxi.

“I’m fine. I really am,” she said. “Just exhausted.”

As they filed out of the room a photographer, taking group pictures of tonight’s prizewinners, called out to Bobby.

“Would the lady mind coming on to the stage for a couple of photos?”

“The ‘lady’ can speak for herself.”

Honor affected weariness as she was helped up the steps.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked.

Her picture was taken in various combinations with the winners and then with the compère, who put his arm around her and mugged to the camera. Though she protested, she submitted, flattered to be remembered.

One of the younger prizewinners, a sweet-faced boy who looked barely old enough to be out of school, asked her for her autograph.

“You’re a real heroine,” he said, holding out a pen and the back of the evening’s menu. “That stuff you did in Spain was brilliant. And your Vietnam coverage was amazing.”

She signed the menu and handed it back with a gracious smile.

“Thanks very much, Martha,” he said. “That means a lot.”

Bobby did not hear the exchange, but Honor’s face was expressive.

Tamara watched Tania break away from her
Psst!
colleagues and head straight for
The Monitor
’s main table, where she tried to engage Johnny Malkinson, who was now wearing his fuchsia bow tie round his head like an Alice band. She had more luck with the Latvian shareholder, who beckoned her to sit next to him in the seat vacated by Austin Wedderburn.

Never mind Tania. Linking her arm proprietarily in Alistair’s, Tamara made her way to the bar with the victorious
Psst!
team for some celebratory champagne. Was it good timing or bad that Tim should be standing in the corner, rumpled, perspiring and momentarily alone? His schoolgirl companion was giggling in a corner with the
Mirror
leader writer. Alistair extricated himself from Tamara, squeezed her hand to reassure her he would be back, and turned to place his order at the bar.

It happened so quickly, and the wine had already taken such a toll, that it was only the next day, after talking to a number of witnesses, that Tamara was able to piece together the sequence of events. The only moments she remembered with any clarity were the overture—the sensation of a cool finger tracing a line down her spine—and the triumphant
finale. At first she had assumed the hand belonged to Alistair and she shivered with pleasure, but when she turned round, smiling, she found herself facing Tim, whose face was crumpling in a series of grotesque winks and pouts.

“What the hell …?” she asked.

“Don’t be like that, Tamara.”

“You’ve got a real cheek. Blanking me for weeks—what was it, pressure of work? Family crises?—then spending the evening pawing your underage lingerie model over there.”

He was not going to give up.

“Come on, Tammy. You weren’t so unfriendly in Paris, were you?”

He reached out and cupped her right breast in his hand, as if testing ripe fruit on a greengrocer’s stall. She brushed him away angrily.

“You can’t just—”

She did not finish her sentence because Alistair was there, holding an uncorked bottle of champagne.

“Back off, granddad,” he growled at Tim.

Tamara was beginning to see just how much she had underestimated Alistair.

“What you going to do about it?” Tim slurred. He was swaying now and seemed to be having difficulty focusing.

“This!”

In a single swift and fluid move Alistair passed the bottle to Tamara with one hand and jabbed his other fist at Tim’s leering face. Tamara’s ex-lover, about whom she was sobbing only yesterday, toppled slowly backwards, rigid as a felled oak, and crashed to the floor. There were yelps of surprise from the crowd.

The head barman squeezed through the throng and rushed to feel Tim’s pulse. Satisfying himself that the victim was still alive, and judging that the loss of consciousness had been caused by alcohol, he tutted loudly and went to fetch the hotel doctor. Tim’s jaw slackened, and he began to snore loudly. The crowd around him laughed, relieved yet disappointed, and began to disperse. Someone took a playful kick at the recumbent figure while senior editors from
The Sphere
stood around awkwardly, trying to gauge the acceptable response. Should they defend their boss’s honour and take out the wide boys from
Psst!
, or should they laugh it off and order another round? None of them really had any taste for action. The boss would get over it, if he even remembered it. The
night had only just started, the bar was still free and there were some likely girls around clearly looking for action of another sort.

At the bar Tamara fussed over the fine spray of blood—Tim’s—stippling Alistair’s white shirt. Arms linked, they walked towards the hotel reception to book a room for the night, and as they passed Tim, still stretched out on the floor, she upended the bottle she was carrying, sending a stream of champagne splashing over his sleeping head.

It was late but, back at her flat, Honor felt an urge to continue the purification ritual she had started on the morning of that dreadful interview. Was it a fortnight ago? She turned on the radio—a documentary about preparations for the handover of Hong Kong—and turned it off again, then went to the bookshelves and upended a pile of books and magazines: a Christie’s catalogue for a photography sale, a critical study of Lucian Freud’s work, a couple of
New York Reviews
. More candidates for permanent exile. She gathered up a history of the Scottish Enlightenment, the latest
New Statesman
, Ian Crichton Smith—generating a light shower of bills, receipts and, aptly cruel, an old card from Lois, who had bought the book on the Enlightenment when history, her own included, was still accessible to her.

Honor poured herself another drink and sat down by the fire, the scattered books still lying at her feet. She picked up the card. Graphology was obvious tosh but in Lois’s large-looped handwriting Honor had always seen the mark of her nature: optimistic, impatient and avid for experience, excitement and answers. Lois had been a great encourager, too, and had followed Honor’s career with an attention that it had never occurred to Honor to reciprocate.

Lois would send detailed and critically intelligent letters about each of Honor’s articles and had suggested several of her best stories, tipping her off about Mme Chiang Kai-shek’s whereabouts, setting up her interviews with MacArthur, Henry Wallace and Dominic Behan, proposing her report on the return trip to Weimar, on the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Buchenwald, and arranging the visit to the orphanage. She had even brokered that article’s publication in
Time
, through an old neighbour from her Brentwood days, when Honor was in the wilderness, personally and professionally. Lois had been her supporter and her
sounding board. There was so much to tell her, and ask her, now. The squalor of the evening seemed a reflection of Honor’s personal disgrace. It wasn’t until Lois became so definitively unavailable that Honor realised how much she had depended on her. She put down her glass. This was a pain she could choose to indulge, or not. She tore the card in two, poured another drink and picked up the proofs of
The Unflinching Eye
.

More reports on Korean skirmishes. The Kŭm River … Sumgyo … Amsong … Pusan … Advance … Retreat … Attack … Counterattack … She closed her eyes. This faithful accounting of troop movements and battle positions had once mattered so much to her. Now it seemed as effortful and pointless as one of those dreadful dances she had been forced to endure as a child. Pointless and murderous—a deadly Dashing White Sergeant.

She was exhausted but knew she could not sleep. She was beating her own ignominious retreat. In the time that remained she should get her affairs in order. She reached for her notebook.

Tamara had no idea how she had managed it but, after last night’s triathlon of excess, she had wrested herself from the bed at the Belvedere, leaving Alistair snoring like a sluggish starter motor, dashed back to her flat to change and hauled herself in to work. It was some comfort to know that she was not alone in her agony. The office was like an emergency department, with stricken figures sprawled around the building, quietly groaning.

Alistair had called in sick, and Simon arrived late, still in his tuxedo, with a wad of surgical gauze taped to his ear—he had tripped on a paving stone, he said. No one in the building who had attended the awards ceremony, with the exception of Tania, spoke above a whisper all day and, as if to compensate for the unusual silence, Courtney’s voice seemed amplified to a megaphone blare. Tania, the personification of good health and clean living, walked among her distressed colleagues, a gleaming rebuke to debauchery.

Simon proposed an early lunch. The wine bar was filled with afflicted colleagues, though the virtuous Tania was there—again—in animated conversation with the books editor, Caspar, who had also escaped the effects of last night’s bacchanal, on account of not being invited. Over two healing bottles and a basket of bread, Simon confessed to Tamara that he had not sustained his injury on an inadequately laid pavement. After leaving the awards dinner he had gone round to Lucinda’s flat, using his old key, which he had neglected to return. He had wanted to surprise her.

“The thing is, it hit me suddenly, with the force of divine revelation: It’s got to be her. I realised I’d been messing around—Serena, Davina—just killing time. It’s so obvious. Lucinda is the one.”

She was also the one for Wayne, her personal fitness trainer, who happened to be sharing her bed when Simon let himself into the flat. Wayne had not appreciated the surprise visit. Simon thought there had been a triumphant light in Lucinda’s eyes as she watched, arms folded, looking delectable in the satin baby dolls that Simon himself had bought her, while Wayne attended to the personal fitness of her ex-lover.

“So it hit you, this revelation. Then he hit you,” Tamara said.

Simon tentatively nibbled his baguette and ignored the remark.

“Now I know I’ve got to get her back. Somehow.”

His mobile phone rang. It was Jan, with more news of plans for Dexter’s birthday next weekend. The catering company had gone bankrupt.

“Well, find another one,” Simon said, rolling his eyes at Tamara. “No … I don’t know,” he snapped. “Try the Yellow Pages.”

He switched off the phone and poured another glass.

“What’s the point of keeping a dog and barking yourself?” he said.

“I know,” Tamara mumbled, though she wasn’t entirely clear what he meant.

“That was some night last night,” he said, ruefully patting his surgical dressing.

“You’re not kidding.”

“Massive punch-up in the bar later, while you were upstairs in the victors’ suite discussing the finer points of paparazzi photography with our mutual colleague.”

She flushed. She was beginning to regret last night’s impulsiveness.

“What was the fight about?”

“
The Courier
news desk weighed into our boys over some spoiler, Ricky Clegg had a scrap with his old deputy from
The Sphere
and someone from
The People
took a swing at the compère. It was pure Dodge City.”

“So when did you leave?”

“Can’t exactly recall. I remember having a full and frank exchange with
The Courier
sports desk about their FA cup supplement—no sense of humour, that lot. And then everything’s a blank—until Lucinda’s.”

“See any sign of Tim Farrow later?”

Simon suddenly brightened at the memory of someone who had come off worse than him and whose disgrace had been so public.

“Completely banjaxed, wasn’t he? Carried off on a palanquin, apparently. Who’d have thought? Little Al, eh.”

“Mmm.”

“So how was your night?” he asked, with a music-hall leer.

“Fine,” she said, anxious to change the subject. “Better than Tim’s, anyway.”

“Best not to gloat too openly over the misfortunes of a potential employer,” Simon said with sudden seriousness. “Tim may be a prat, but he’s a useful prat. You never know when a staff job on
The Sphere
might come in handy.”