The Spoiler (36 page)

The radio would give her all the company she needed. She turned it on and listened with growing impatience. Yet more speculation about the date of the election, the Tory government faced a fresh row over sleaze, feeble analysis of a newly divorced princess’s attempts to make herself useful by posing with land-mine victims in Angola. No interest here to divert her. Silence was preferable. And work could no longer be avoided. She sat down and picked up her pen.

Tamara lay staring up at the fringed Chinese lantern suspended between the eaves in the shabby attic flat. She was basking in the warmth radiating from the sleeping form beside her, and in the prospect of professional triumph. Tim would not like this. He would not like this at all. He would certainly share her exultation once she had delivered the copy and it was laid out on two double-page spreads, with incriminating pictures
and punchy headlines. But he would hate the fact that while he was stuck in his deadly marriage, reduced to pawing ambitious interns for kicks, Tamara had moved on to a younger, more agile, infinitely more attractive lover.

Memories of last night—a languorous unfolding and entwining and, what seemed like hours later, a mutual climax of raucous intensity—would keep her going for weeks. She turned on the pillow to face him. At this moment, she realised, she had become one of those people who could say with heartfelt honesty, “I love my work.” But there was something troubling her, too; recollections of the night’s pleasures were interrupted by unwelcome thoughts of her new lover’s recent exertions with Honor Tait. She looked at the sweet perfection of his face, at the touching groove above his lovely lips, pursed in sleep—and that was only his face. What a waste.

The principles of female prostitution were obvious. It would not be difficult to keep emotion out of the transaction and, if the client was unsavoury, you could always focus on his wallet. But, in the case of male escorts—masseurs, gigolos—with their inevitably unappetizing female clients, what Tamara could never fathom was the question of gravity; how did they manage to perform?

His back was now turned to her, and his faint snores vibrated like a cat’s purr. She needed to move the story on. Would now be a good time to broach it? She put an exploratory hand on the honeyed curve of his shoulder. He moaned softly and seemed to slip into a deeper sleep. Shrugging herself into him, she ran the arch of her foot down his calf. Now he was groaning, coming to life. He rolled over, stretching his arms as he yawned, glanced at her then stared up at the ceiling.

“Dev?” She stroked his arm.

“Mmm?”

“You awake?”

“I am now.”

“I really enjoyed last night,” she said.

“Mmm.”

She slid her hand down his groin. There was not much going on there either.

“Those healing hands of yours were really something,” she said.

He took her wrist and held it firmly.

“Don’t you have work to do this morning?” he asked.

She could not tell him that
this
was her work—lingering in bed, exhausted by pleasure, next to a living, breathing, sexually adept version of Michelangelo’s
David
.

“Got the morning off,” she said, only half lying.

“Right.” He turned towards her, releasing her hand. “Well, we can’t all afford to hang around. I’ve got stuff to do. Clients to see.”

“Some of your famous clients?”

“Maybe.”

“Like who?”

“That would be telling.”

“Like Honor Tait?”

His smile faded.

“You know her?”

She felt a tightening in her throat. Had she blown it? Gone in too soon?

“Vaguely. Every journalist knows Honor Tait. Knows
of
her.”

He pulled back the duvet and got out of bed.

“So, how did you hear? About her and me?”

He walked towards the kitchen area—two portable gas rings on a pine table by a sink.

“Word gets round,” she said.

“What sort of word?” he asked, filling the kettle.

Tamara sat up and leaned back against the pillow in a show of calm. This was dangerous territory. Maybe he had spotted her at the charity event or in the café after all. Or outside the art gallery.

“Oh, you know, you and her, angels, prisms, auras … that sort of thing.”

“Camomile?” he asked.

“Great.”

“Seriously,” he said, “how did you hear about her and me?”

“Actually, I’ve seen you before. At that meeting in Archway. The children’s charity? I was there, sitting at the back.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I noticed you arrive late.”

He turned his back, reaching for two mugs from a rickety cupboard.

“I just wanted to check her out,” he said. “See her in action. On duty. She’s got quite a following, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. I suppose she has. And then I saw you together,” Tamara continued.
“There’s a café I go to in Maida Vale, and I saw you outside her flat there.”

He froze. “Outside Holmbrook?”

“Yes. I’d heard she lived there. Bit of a coincidence, really. I’d been coming to the café on and off for a while to write my book.”

He brought the tea over, got into bed and leaned over to retrieve a red velvet pouch from the floor.

“What sort of book are you writing?” he asked.

“A memoir, sort of,” she hedged.

“You write for newspapers too, don’t you?”

Her heart lurched again. Had Ross told him about her work for
The Sphere
? Or had she let it out in a moment of drunken indiscretion last night? She sipped the tea and recoiled. Did anyone honestly like this stuff? It was like a microwaved urine sample.

“Now and again. Helps to pay the bills.”

He picked up a hardback—
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
—and began to roll a joint, licking the gummed edge of the cigarette papers. His tongue was pink and pointed as a sugar mouse.

“Yeah. We’ve all got to pay the bills. What sort of newspapers?”

Her heartbeat was so loud she was sure he could hear it. He was suspicious, and she was absurdly vulnerable—naked and alone with him in a part of London she barely knew. This was frontline reporting.

“Oh, a few papers, and magazines. I do TV listings, that sort of thing.”

He snapped the catch on the lighter and applied the flame to the joint, narrowing his eyes as he inhaled deeply. After ten seconds two plumes of smoke shot from his nostrils like steam from the nose of an enraged bull. When he finally spoke, his voice was a cracked squeak.

“Ever work for the Sunday tabloids?”

This was it. He must have locked the front door when they stumbled in last night, his hands kneading her breasts, hers grasping his cock. Where had he put the key?

“Once or twice. Bits and pieces.”

She checked her exit route, noting the position of her shoes and clothes, heaped where they left them when he stripped her on the sofa last night. Was this a bone fide flat? Or was it a couple of rooms in a badlands squat—the sort of place Ross used to hang around before he plunged downmarket?

“How much do they pay for stories, then?”

Tamara had no memory of their journey here last night, apart from a vague recollection of stumbling upstairs past a punk girl in a plastic miniskirt.

“Not much, really. I might get sixty pounds a shift for doing the TV listings.”

He passed her the joint. She needed a clear head for this conversation. But if she refused to smoke, he might become more suspicious.

“Not you. I wasn’t asking how much
you
got,” he said. “The people who sell stories, scandals, the dirt on ex-lovers? Don’t they get a fortune?”

She applied the joint to her lips, taking small, shallow breaths. Despite her restraint the smoke unspooled slowly through her system. At least he didn’t seem hostile now. Irritable, perhaps, but not openly hostile.

“They can make a packet, yes. Depends.”

“What are you talking? Five figures? Six?”

Despite his agitation, a delicious calm began to spread through her veins. She wriggled further down into the bed and passed the joint back to him. His urgency was oddly attractive.

“Sometimes six. If it’s a good-enough story involving a celebrity.”

“Would you call Honor Tait a celebrity?” he asked.

“Not really …” If she appeared too keen it would raise his price. “She’s too old to be a celebrity. She’s kind of famous—but only to journalists and pointy-head writers.”

“She was on that TV arts programme,” he said. “And they say she screwed Frank Sinatra. He’s a celebrity, isn’t he?”

“But he’s dead. Where’s the fun in that?”

He pushed his hair back from his forehead. He really was a lovely sight. She wanted to trace her finger across his lips, follow the line of his jaw, then draw her hand down his chest. But this wasn’t the moment.

“There must be some mileage in her,” he insisted. “She’s been on the telly. People recognise her in the street. Her husband, Tad Challis, was a famous film director. MBE, the lot. He made
The Pleasure Seekers, Hairdressers’ Honeymoon …
British comedy classics. There might be something on him. Everyone’s heard of him.”

“Everyone over thirty with a taste for retro comedy. Besides which, he’s dead. Not much of a circulation builder, stories about dead people.”

“There must be something.”

He gnawed at his thumbnail. This was her moment.

“Well, there might be some money in a story about a respectable old
woman, recent subject of a TV programme, profiled in
Vogue
, darling of the chattering classes, et cetera, shares platforms with members of the shadow cabinet, if, for instance, illicit sex was involved.”

Levering himself up on the pillow, he turned to look directly into her face.

“Sex?”

“Yes. Ridiculous, I know.”

“What do you mean illicit?”

“Well, it has to be a bit out of the ordinary … transgressive. If she was doing it with another pensioner, there wouldn’t be a story, and no one would want to read about it anyway. Kinky’s good, but it mustn’t be too gross. No bestiality, for instance. These are family newspapers.”

He began to roll another joint. It was agony to look at him but not to touch.

“What sort of ‘transgressive’ sex would these family newspapers find acceptable, then?”

“I suppose all sex involving the over sixties is transgressive, but if, for example, she were sleeping with someone—same species, alive, obviously—younger, much younger, then that would be the sort of acceptably weird sex story they could carry. Hard to imagine, I know.”

“And they’d pay a lot for that kind of story?”

“Yes. I think you’d find they would.”

He leaned towards her, his lips within kissing distance—she would not even have to raise her head—and passed her the joint.

“Six figures?”

“They might. Depends.”

She held the smoke in her lungs, savouring it, before exhaling slowly with a covert smile. Her job was almost done. He had taken the bait.

“Depends on what?”

“Just how much he’s prepared to say,” she said hoarsely. “Whether there are any pictures—of him with Honor Tait. No porn shots, though. No one wants to see old people with their clothes off.”

He laughed, throwing his head back.

“And you could put me in touch with these papers?”

She reached up and gently stroked his face.

“Treat me nicely and I’ll see what I can do.”

Honor’s life, as much as was possible in this spare final act, had given every outward impression of being fulfilling, or at least interesting. Old and useless as she was, she had at least mastered the illusion of purpose: work, of a kind, friends, music, theatre, an interest in world affairs. She had kept herself busy.

Travel was no longer possible and, though this had seemed the cruelest blow, she resisted bitterness, thinking of Lois, for whom an unaccompanied journey down to the foyer of the hospital, or even to the lavatory at the end of the ward, would be as hazardous, heroic and unlikely as a lone trip up the Amazon. Their world had shrunk. Accept it. And that adventurous spirit she once shared with Lois, their relish for new places, must now be turned inward. Honor was at last entering true
terra incognita;
there were no maps, no one would follow her precise route to this unknown destination, and she would be making the journey alone.

Until recently, blank days in her diary could make her as panicky as a teenage wallflower. She had meted out appointments, events, dates with friends, even phone calls, spacing them carefully, luminous landmarks in the lengthening dusk. And what, truly, did all this activity amount to? Cheerful tunes, asinine music-hall songs, hummed in solitude to mask the terrible silence. “My old man said, ‘Follow the van, and don’t dilly dally on the way.’ ” The van, it struck her now, must have been a hearse.