The Spoiler (38 page)

Tamara settled on a three-star hotel in a Paddington terrace. It was not the Ritz but, while Tim had finally offered Dev £50,000, plus a generous fee of £3,500 to Tamara, he insisted that her expenses for the piece had to be modest.

“I’m already stretching my budget with this, babe,” Tim told her. “I’ve had to fight to get this through our managing editor.”

Dev, who had been hoping for at least £100,000, was not impressed when Tamara phoned to tell him the news.

“If that’s the best they can do, I’m not sure it’s worth my while,” he said.

“But you said it yourself. This story needs to be told.”

“Once it appears, my main source of income will be gone. She won’t give me any more money. Ever. That will be it. Then what do I do?”

And once he had outed Honor Tait in the tabloids, his other clients would melt away too.

“But you wanted to make a fresh start,” she argued. “Put it all behind you.”

There was a pause. This could go either way, Tamara thought.

Finally, he spoke.

“Okay. As long as it’s in cash. No cash, no deal.”

Tim handed Tamara a briefcase filled with enough banknotes, clean and crisp as counterfeits, to make a substantial down payment on a decent West London flat.

“Highly irregular,” he said, winking with his good eye. “But I’m counting on you for some quality sleaze.”

She booked the room over the phone, negotiating a discount by implying that she would give the hotel a favourable mention in
The Monitor
’s travel pages. She insisted on their best suite, which apparently included an “emperor-sized” bed and a whirlpool bath.

Strangely, Tim seemed to be encouraging extracurricular activity.

“A bit of hotel rumpy-pumpy? If that’s what it takes. You go for it, girl,” he said.

Tamara was peeved by his absence of jealousy, but she was looking forward to some serious pampering, some rest and recreation, as well as some rewarding work, and it would be negligent not to take advantage of the hotel facilities.

The display advert in the Yellow Pages had promised “intimate luxury and superlative service,” but the shabby carpet in the hotel foyer and the yawning receptionist on the front desk suggested neither. It was too late to do anything about it now. Dev turned up with his backpack just as Tamara took the key. They stepped into the lift, a narrow wooden box, like a vertical coffin, which enforced an intimacy—groin brushing groin, thigh rubbing thigh—neither seemed prepared for.

He seemed almost shy, looking away when she tried to engage him with a knowing smile. She was going to have to handle the next two days with great sensitivity. He was feeling humiliated, she knew. What self-respecting man would be happy admitting to the world that he was sleeping with a geriatric? He might also be feeling guilt at betraying Honor Tait. That was, Tamara knew, one of the most pernicious aspects of abuse—victims felt responsibility for their victimisation.

“Have you got the cash?” he asked, as the lift stopped on the third floor.

“Yes. Right here.”

She patted the briefcase, accidentally brushing his crotch with her elbow.

When she unlocked the door to their suite they were met, though not welcomed, by a brassy fanfare of colour: an enormous heart-shaped arrangement of carnations barred their way into the room and, above it, like a pastel punching bag, bobbed a pink balloon bearing a Disney-style image of two kissing cupids.

“What the hell is all this about?” asked Dev, squeezing his way round the giant floral display, which was giving off a sickly fructose scent.

Pink bunting—more hearts—was pegged up around the window, which looked out onto the bleak service area at the back of the hotel. Over the bed (prince-size rather than emperor-, she would guess, and covered in pink chenille) was a banner in jolly nursery lettering enthusing, “Congratulations!”

“I asked for the best room in the hotel. I didn’t expect all this. It must be the honeymoon suite.”

“It’s an eyesore,” he said, with the pursed mouth of a spoiled child. “I can’t stay here.”

Then he saw the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket by the bed.

“Well, this will come in useful, anyway.”

“There’ll be plenty more where that came from,” Tamara reassured him.

He poured himself a glass, sullenly stretched out on the bed and began channel surfing.

“Any for me?”

He passed her the bottle without averting his eyes from the TV at the foot of the bed, which was showing a children’s quiz show—eager little swots vying for a worthless prize. She phoned room service for more champagne, and the receptionist, now wearing a chambermaid’s apron, brought in the bottles, edging carefully past the flowers. She left the tray on the table and backed out of the room, unsettling the cupids and almost toppling the carnation heart.

Dev switched to a porn channel, taking in a scene of naked mud wrestling with a connoisseur’s cool eye while rolling a joint with one hand. Tamara opened a second bottle, kicked off her shoes and passed him a drink in exchange for the joint. They lay inches apart like figures on a medieval tomb, their brows creased with stoned concentration as the mud wrestling evolved into sludge sex. She reached across to stroke his arm, and he sighed.

“So when do we start?” he said.

“Whenever you like,” she murmured.

“I mean this story deal.”

He seemed unaccountably tetchy.

“No pressure.”

She got up and dimmed the lights, arranged herself decoratively on the bed and opened another bottle of champagne.

“You sure you’ve got the money?” he asked.

“I told you. In my bag.”

“Show me.”

For forty hours they holed up in their suite, sleeping little, sedulously smoking their way through two ounces of grass, snorting the best part of a gram of cocaine, drinking a crate of champagne and talking; above all, talking. They ignored the whirlpool bath, and Tamara’s hopes of a weekend sex junket were soon forgotten. They made love only once, almost by accident; he rolled on top of her to reach for a bottle, their thin hotel bathrobes parted, flesh met flesh, and they were surprised by desire. Their bodies did the work, but it was a perfunctory entanglement. As they rocked together conscientiously, to the metronome accompaniment of the bed’s headboard banging against the wall, his mind was evidently elsewhere. Something had happened to her, too. He was beautiful, yes. But all she really wanted was the story.

And she got it. What a story. Once he started to talk, he could not stop, and the sordid tale unfolded in a smog of recrimination and marijuana smoke. Tamara, taking notes, propped up on pillows next to him, with her tape recorder running on the bedside table, marvelled at the transformation; the enigmatic man of few words turned out to be a monologuist. She put in more than a dozen cassettes. This would, she knew, mean a marathon transcription job later, but her notes would shortcut the process.

He was angry, and spoke with such vehemence that it seemed revenge, rather than money, propelled his confession. He was not, he insisted, a professional gigolo, nor any kind of male escort. He never had been. He had been entirely truthful when he first met Tamara; he was a qualified masseur, a healer and “seeker after truth” with psychic gifts, but he had been groomed as a boy and then abused for years by a manipulative old woman who had lured him into her clutches and destroyed his chances of ever having a normal relationship.

“I’ve tried to get away, believe me,” he said. “But she always dragged me back.” He shook his head, overcome by regret and shame. “She drew me back in each time. I could never escape.”

Tamara looked up from her notebook.

“How young were you when it started?”

He avoided her eyes, staring straight ahead at the blank TV screen.

“Twelve? Thirteen? I don’t know. What I do know is that I was a complete innocent.”

Tamara’s disgust was tempered with jubilation. This was a story of boundless depravity, and she could not wait to tell it.

“Thirteen? You were a schoolboy?”

“What else would I be doing? Career opportunities for thirteen-year-olds were limited.”

She would not be deterred by his sarcasm. His real hostility was towards Honor Tait, she knew.

“How did you meet?”

“She was close to my father.”

“Were they lovers?”

He bit his lower lip. This was agony for him.

“Everyone was her lover.”

“Does your father know about you and her?”

“Not the full story, no. He died years ago.”

He closed his eyes. She reached over and stroked his hand.

“It must be hard for you. You must feel you’re betraying her in some way. But you’ve got to fight that. You’re the one who was betrayed.”

He seemed grateful for her insight.

“Maybe, by telling this, by putting it out there, I can start the healing process,” he said, rolling another joint.

They lost track of time and slept where they sat or sprawled, at odd hours in brief snatches. They called room service when they were hungry or needed more drink, and the more he talked, the more aloof and distant he became. At one point, as they lay side by side on the bed, Tamara thought she had lost him altogether. It was an indelicate question, but she felt it needed to be asked.

“You’re young and good-looking. She isn’t. How does that work?”

“How does what work?”

“You know. When you’re together. Alone.”

He rolled over on his elbow, and for a moment she saw a flicker of menace in his eyes.

“What exactly are you saying?”

There was no diplomatic way of putting this.

“You know …” She mimed, crooking and flexing her index finger. “How do you get it up?”

He hit his pillow with such force that it sent up a spray of feathers.

“Use your imagination, for fuck’s sake! Do I have to spell it out to you?”

It was a tricky moment. She had to work to soothe him, ordering more champagne and promising (rashly, she knew) that
The Sphere
would throw in his air fare to Goa—if that was what he wanted—on top of the agreed fee for the story.

“First class?”

“First class.” He calmed down, reached for the Gideon Bible and began to cut a line of cocaine.

“How did it start? The abuse?” she asked in a neutral tone she fancied made her sound like a counsellor.

“How do these things usually start?”

He was behaving like a surly teenager.

“I don’t know. Grooming? Inappropriate touching?” she suggested.

“Yes. Grooming,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Grooming. Inappropriate touching. The lot. She was always at it. Holding me. Pawing me. She called me her Darling Boy.”

“And Tad, her husband? The film director? Did he know about any of this?”

She had to strain to hear his answer.

“He was in on it too.”

Tamara turned to check that her Sony was still recording.

“In what way?” she asked.

He put down the rolled banknote, licked his index finger and dabbed at the few grains of cocaine left on the Bible. He was further away than ever from her now, lost in past traumas.

“In every way,” he said, closing his eyes. “He liked to dress up to do it. Women’s clothes. Makeup. Wigs. High heels. The lot.”

“Sick,” she said. “Sick bastards.”

“That’s exactly what they were. They destroyed my past, and my future too.”

Tamara’s first reaction, after checking her tape recorder, was to reach out and console him, but he shied away and lay curled up, unreachable in his misery, on the edge of the bed, a broken man. The burden of shame was too great. She was moved by the hopelessness of his blighted life and could still appreciate his beauty, but now that she had learned the full extent of his intimacy with Honor Tait, Tamara realised she was
repelled not just by the old woman but by him, too. To make love to Dev now would be to experience a vicarious intimacy with a repugnant old woman. He was Tait’s creature.

Tamara knew she would walk away from him once their business was done. It was important to tell this story, and she would tell it well. It was good, empowering even, to be on the side of virtue, to expose cruelty and hypocrisy. But she understood that their first night of lovemaking and its disappointing reprise in this hotel were the beginning and end of their affair.

By Monday morning there was nothing left to say; all that remained was to set up the photographic evidence with the
Sunday Sphere
picture desk. Dev would emerge on the steps of Holmbrook in the company of Honor Tait at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. The photographer would be waiting outside the Gut and Bucket with his long lens and, once the pictures had been taken, would hand over an envelope containing the promised air fare in the pub. Tamara refrained from asking whether Dev would, before their unofficial photo call, offer himself to Tait for a final time.

They began to dress, and Tamara took a furtive last look at his cock, magnificent even in repose. His face, by contrast, looked drained and spent as he walked towards her, beckoning.

“We haven’t got much time left,” he said.

She leaned in for a passionate final kiss, but he dodged her lips and pointed at the briefcase.

“The cash?” he reminded her.

It occurred to Honor, as she looked down on the bare wintry garden, that there was more warmth and life down there than up here in her flat. She felt a pang of pleasure as she turned back to the room, empty and clarifying as a tomb. She should have done this years ago.

Here at last, undistracted, she felt ready for her final act of purging. Only now could she exhume the truth she had buried for fifty years.