The Spoiler (41 page)

Honor shook her head. “Look, I really didn’t know him …”

“But the pictures!”

“I sat next to him at dinner once,” Honor said wearily. “We were photographed together. I didn’t know him. I barely talked to him. I couldn’t abide his music.”

Tamara leaned towards her with a complacent smile.

“Bing, then. Tell me about Bing Crosby.”

What was the girl talking about?

“Never met him.”

“But you danced with him. You told me.”

Honor drew herself up and laughed, remembering.

“Ah yes. Our first interview. When you were leaving. Don’t you know when your leg is being pulled?”

Tamara stiffened. So the old woman was now claiming it had been a joke. Too bad. She had said it. On the record. And Bing was not around to deny it.

“Marilyn,” said Tamara. “Did she ever confide in you?”

“Marilyn?”

“Monroe. Did she strike you as the suicidal type?”

“For goodness’ sake, I think I met her once and barely exchanged a word with her.”

Even in defeat the old woman was stubborn. Tamara pressed on. She would return to Marilyn and Bing later.

“And Liz Taylor. How close were you—you and Tad—to Liz?”

This was prurience of an eclectic kind, thought Honor.

“Close? We weren’t close. I think Tad worked with her once. On a picture.”

“What about those wild Hollywood parties?”

This line of questioning puzzled Honor.

“Tad could be sociable, certainly.”

Tamara’s eyes widened to an inquisitor’s stare.

“How sociable? Was he sociable in the bedroom, too?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

Was this the broadsheet alternative to tabloid bile? Was the narrative of her life to be reduced to a tepid gush of name-dropping and innuendo?

“Even the most serious stories need some pep and human interest,” Tamara said, with open condescension.

The old woman’s reply was a reflexive snap: “I need no lessons in basic journalism from you.”

“Well, perhaps that’s exactly where you’re going wrong. When did you last write for a newspaper? I mean, actually write a story? How many decades ago? Things have changed. The world has changed. You might benefit from a little instruction in late-twentieth-century journalism.”

Tamara was enjoying this. But the old woman, too, seemed suddenly roused.

“Journalism? Really? What do you know about it? You and your kind have the same relationship to journalism as lavatory graffiti to the Sistine Chapel.”

“I don’t see what makes you so superior.”

Honor shook her head. It was a pointless squandering of diminishing resources to pursue this further. To blame a witless shopgirl, who by some accident of fate had ended up typing titbits in a magazine instead of scanning barcodes at a supermarket checkout, was to give her an importance she did not merit. It was the culture that was at fault, not her.

“Look,” Honor said more gently, “it’s not about you. It’s about the time you’re living in. You’re a pawn, an innocent, the end result of a process
of decline that has elevated nonentities, moved the bedroom into the bazaar and conflated fame with virtue.”

Her conciliatory tone did not soften the insult.

“You weren’t so very high and mighty then, were you?” Tamara replied. “In the good old glory days? Hobnobbing with the stars, thinking you were something of a star yourself, photographed with a Spanish dictator in your hot pants. Do you think that picture would have gone anywhere if you hadn’t been glamorous and scantily clad? At least I’ve generally managed to keep my clothes on in the course of an interview. You played the game. You put yourself about—all that ‘high IQ in a low-cut gown’ stuff. Nobody’s fooled by your intellectual grande dame act.”

The silence that followed was prolonged and intense. Honor could hear her breath roaring like a stiff north wind in her ears. Tamara was staring fiercely at her notes, wondering whether she had finally gone too far. Tim had been very keen on this second interview, she reminded herself, and there was a good deal at stake here. Suddenly, as clamorous in the quiet of the room as a fire alarm, the telephone rang. Honor rose from her chair and walked stiffly into the hall.

“Hello … Who is this? … How did you get this number? … No. I have nothing to say … The whole thing is ridiculous … Who gave you this number? … I just want to be left in peace … Of course it’s untrue … No. I have nothing to say …”

She dropped the receiver as if it had scalded her hand and walked back into the room with cautious steps. Tamara watched Honor—still lying, still in denial—shut her eyes and tense her body against pain as she lowered herself into the chair.

“You need me more than I need you,” the young woman said.

Honor’s eyes flashed open.

“Don’t you think I have been mocked and humiliated enough? What exactly do you want from me? Should I howl and sob into your tape recorder? Is that it? Go into the street and weep for the photographers?” She pointed a shaking finger at Tamara. “What your generation doesn’t seem to understand is that there are such things as private matters; that to some people no amount of money or promise of advantage would induce them to talk about these matters. It’s a question of integrity. And the vulgar publicity, the public exposure, brought to them by airing family business, private affairs, in confessional memoirs or newspaper articles would be completely abhorrent, unthinkable.”

“Very noble, I’m sure,” Tamara said with a slow smile, her triumph nearly complete. “But they’re out there now, your ‘private affairs,’ aren’t they?”

Honor shrank back in her chair.

“This is preposterous.”

“You can be as snooty as you like about it, but when more than one person is involved in ‘your affairs,’ you can’t guarantee they subscribe to the same moral code. Not everyone can afford to be that principled—or perverted.”

Honor Tait’s face hardened into a mask of such ferocity that, for a moment, Tamara feared she might be capable of violence.

“Just what are you implying?”

Tamara paused. Honor Tait was barely able to stand unaided, much less strike out with any force. She was clearly not, at this stage, going to spill any beans on her celebrity friends, but if she could be provoked into an angry quote, admitting her guilt over Dev, perhaps attempting to defend her actions, then that would give a new angle and extend the story’s life. Every paper would run it.

“Your ‘boyfriend,’ companion, whatever you call him, he obviously felt he stood to gain more by telling your story than by continuing your ‘arrangement.’ Maybe you just didn’t pay him enough. Maybe, rather than being an active supporter of worthy causes—Kid’s Crusader!—defender of the underprivileged, scourge of injustice, you are actually a callous, hypocritical exploiter, a vile child abuser.”

Honor felt the blood drain from her face, and she was seized by a sudden weakness, as if her bones and sinews were melting away. All she could do was sit, silent and horrified, as the girl continued her senseless rant.

“You had all the power—the money, the reputation—and he was a kid, an innocent boy. Was this what you meant by ‘championing the weak’ and ‘shining a searchlight in the darkest corners of human experience’?”

Honor closed her eyes, and her hands balled into fists in her lap. When she spoke at last, her voice was so faint and tremulous that Tamara had to strain to hear it.

“At seventy-nine years of age, after a long life, rich and interesting by any standards, with a respected body of work behind me, devoted to the pursuit of truth and exposure of injustice, it seems this absurd lie is what I’ll be remembered for.”

“This lie?”

“I will be seen forever as a vain and foolish old woman, a grotesque object of ridicule, a byword for deluded and distasteful lust. A female Malvolio, cross-gartered in her dotage.”

Tamara was losing patience.

“ ‘This lie’?”

The old woman shot Tamara a whiplash look.

“Yes. This lie, which will stay in the press cuttings, along with all those other lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and will be endlessly repeated. Like nuclear waste, these lies will have an infinite half-life. They will never entirely disappear.”

Tamara was not going to be thrown by her bluff.

“Don’t try to deny it. We have the evidence. Dev told us everything, in minute detail.”

“We”? “Us”? She had given too much away. But the old woman did not seem to notice.

“In some cultures,” Honor said, “your naïveté might be seen as charming.”

Her voice was returning to her, regaining some of its strength.

“But the facts were all laid out: the times and dates of your meetings …” Tamara said.

“ ‘The facts’? This isn’t fact. It’s a crass contemporary fantasy for the lowest common denominator. You people are only interested in simple-minded archetypes. Bad people. Good people. Fairy-tale endings. Cruel comeuppances. Imbecilic morality tales for an amoral age.”

Tamara was not going to be harangued by a repulsive old paedophile.

“Now wait a moment. This was a serious investigation, with a strong public interest element. You’re an influential figure. You’ve published pronouncements on moral issues, talked endlessly about truth. What you say, how you live, matters.”

“A simple, lurid lie will always be more attractive to people like you than dull, complicated truth.”

“Don’t give me ‘people like me.’ It’s people like you who are the problem here. How complicated can it be? You have been seeing him regularly, your ‘aura masseur.’ Your gigolo.”

“ ‘Aura masseur’? One of his many skills. And gigolo, too? A true Renaissance man.”

“This isn’t the time for sarcasm. He’s been coming to you for private sessions.”

“A lie.”

“You were photographed with him!”

Honor sighed and shook her head.

“Yes. I was photographed with him.”

Tamara felt a thrill of righteousness. She knew how this went; she had seen the prosecuting barrister’s merciless routine in countless TV soaps.

“You were holding hands.”

The old woman, the defendant, bowed her head, and was about to change her plea to guilty.

“Yes.”

“Kissing.”

Tait lowered her head further. Telling the truth, Tamara could see, was costing her a great deal.

“Yes.”

“Like lovers.”

At this Tait lifted her head. She was nodding now. An admission of guilt. Tamara had her at last.

But when it came, the old woman’s answer was a vehement denial.

“No! No! Not like lovers.”

Tamara was exasperated, but she was not going to give up. One more push.

“So, you agree you do know him. He did come to see you. And you held his hand and you kissed him, just as you’d done since he was a boy.”

The next “yes” was a whisper.

“Your lover,” pressed Tamara. “Your paid-for lover.”

Honor extended a wavering hand and gripped the arm of the chair, using it to lever herself to her feet. She was agitated, trembling all over now, and walked slowly to the fireplace where she clutched the edge of the mantelpiece for support.

“He was a … friend. A close friend. I’ve barely seen him in the past seven years.”

This was procedural, a distraction. Tamara refused to be deflected.

“Never mind times and dates. Let’s deal with the truth here. You kissed him.”

“Yes, I kissed him,” said the old woman wearily, unwinding the green worry beads coiled around the base of the clock.

“You were lovers,” Tamara said, elated by her adversarial mantra. “You kissed him, like a lover, not like a friend.”

“Not like a friend. Not like a lover,” Honor repeated faintly, twisting the circle of jade in her hand.

“We’ve seen the photographs. How exactly were you kissing him then?”

Tamara had her now.

A sudden sound, like a hailstorm rattling against a window, broke the silence as the thread snapped in Honor Tait’s fingers and the beads fell in a sudden stream, bouncing and scattering across the parquet. The old woman did not move.

“Like a mother,” she said quietly.

Tamara had a sudden swooping sensation of weightlessness.

“What are you saying?”

“I kissed him,” Honor Tait said in a voice ringing with anger, “not like a friend, or a lover. I kissed him like a mother. A mother kissing her son.”

Tamara reeled back in her chair.

“Dev is your son? But you never mentioned a son.”

Honor sat down again, and Tamara stared as the old woman absently sifted the few remaining beads, like grains in an hourglass, through her gnarled hands.

“He was—is—my only son: Daniel, Danny, Hari, Asgar, Dev—whatever name he’s calling himself at the moment. He’s my son. My adopted son.”

She was lying. She must be. What else could she do? It was the reckless act of a cornered woman, a practised manipulator. She had succeeded in throwing Tamara off course, but only temporarily. Tamara checked her recorder—still plenty of tape left—and picked up her notepad. She needed to get the facts absolutely straight.

“There was no mention of a son in any of the cuttings I read.”

Honor answered in a mocking drawl.

“Well, if it’s not in the cuttings file …”

Tamara sat, silent and tense, trying to recall Dev’s accusations—his exact words—as Honor continued.

“Daniel Edmund Tait, or Varga as he preferred, went—fled—to New
Zealand in 1990 at the age of twenty-three. He bought enough land to set up a commune on the South Island with a bunch of like-minded crackpots. It all fell apart, of course. Then he went to Hong Kong, and blew the rest of his money there before moving to northern India, then Spain, then on.”

“You’re lying.”

Honor stiffened.

“If it’s lies that interest you, Daniel could run master classes. He always had a taste for invention and reinvention. During a brief period of teenaged gentrification, when he swaggered about Chelsea in a waxed jacket like a country landowner at a point-to-point, he insisted we called him by his middle name, Edmund. When the drugs first took hold, he changed that to Ed.”

“Dev and Daniel are the same person?”

Honor tilted her chin and smiled with false pity.