Thieving Fear (3 page)

'We'll see what she has the cheek to ask.'

'Peggy, you said I was trying to divert attention away from some behaviour of my own. What kind? You surely aren't accusing me of sexual abuse.'

'Mrs Nash, you said –'

'I heard her. Couldn't not. I've never known anyone to drone so much. Used to put me to sleep while I was awake and keep me awake when I was trying to sleep.' Having ventilated this, Peggy said 'There are other kinds of abuse.'

'And which are you saying I was guilty of?'

'Miss Lomax would like to know –'

'I can still hear her. It's like hearing a cow moo.' Peggy rested her gaze on the chairman while she added 'Here's the truth and she won't like it. She made up that tale about Daniel to get him kicked out.'

'Why would she have done that?'

'Because she didn't want him there any more than she wanted me.'

'The previous witness agreed with Miss Lomax's version of events.'

'Are you talking about Muriel Stiles?'

Ellen hoped Peggy's tone had antagonised the chairman more than he made audible. 'That was the lady, yes.'

'She didn't see anything. She only heard Doris making a fuss, and everyone knew poor old Doris dreamed up half of what she said. We'd be sitting in the day room and she'd say the man on television wanted her to get undressed.'

'She could be a little flustered sometimes,' Ellen told the panel, 'but she wasn't that night. I'd remind you that Mr and Mrs Cremorne took the situation seriously enough to send him on his way.'

'Only because she saw her chance and backed Doris up,' Peggy said. 'Maybe she hated him even more than me because she had to work with him.'

'Forgive me, Mrs Nash, but we need to be clear for the record. You mean like you in the sense of . . .'

'Black.' With enough force to capitalise all the letters Peggy repeated 'Black.'

Ellen had to draw a breath as shaky as her mouth to catch her voice. 'That really isn't true.'

'Is she trying to paint me as white as she wants you to think she is?'

'I'm saying I've never said or done anything against her, and this is the first time she's ever said I have.'

'Too frightened to while you were at the Seabreeze,' Virginia Cremorne muttered.

'The light went off in my room one night,' Peggy said, 'and that one told everyone she wouldn't be able to see me in the dark.'

Ellen managed to produce a parched laugh. 'That wasn't how it happened, Peggy. If you remember, I was changing the bulb because nobody else could be bothered, and I simply said I couldn't see you in your chair because you were so far from the door.'

'Were there witnesses?' the chairman said to one or both of them.

'They're some of the ones she got fired.'

'Is this documented, Mr Bentley?' When the lawyer admitted the opposite the chairman said 'Please continue, Miss Lomax.'

'Is there anything else you want to say about me, Peggy?'

'I don't want anything to do with that one at all,' Peggy told everyone apart from Ellen.

'Have you even got a problem with my name?'

Peggy clutched at the wheels of her chair. 'Can I go now?'

All at once Ellen was sure it was crucial to ask 'Seriously, aren't you able to say it?'

'Why should I?' Peggy appealed to the chairman.

'I think perhaps you should just for the record.'

'It's Lomax.'

'That's what you've heard people calling me today. What did they call me at the Seabreeze? You must remember, surely. Like the gentleman told you, it's for the record.'

'Little Miss Innocence. Little Miss Better Than Everyone Else.' To the Cremornes Peggy said 'Do you know what Doris used to call her? Little Saint Whosit. I wouldn't call her little anything.'

Ellen had to shrug the insult off to reach the point. 'Saint what, Peggy? What's my name?'

'That's all Doris said,' Peggy informed the panel. 'I told you she didn't know what was going on or who anyone was half the time.'

'I hope that's enough,' Jack Cremorne said. 'Aren't you ever going to stop bullying our residents, Ellen?'

'And don't anybody run away with the idea I didn't know her name,' Peggy said, 'except I used to call her Lemon and she never knew.'

'Are there any other matters you would like to raise, Miss Lomax?'

'I think I'm finished.'

She was almost certain that the chairman gave her a sympathetic look. 'Thank you, Mrs Nash,' he said. 'We appreciate the effort you've made to speak to us.'

'It's a pity more didn't. Jack and Virginia have enough problems without this.'

The Cremornes seemed less than wholly grateful for her parting comment. They watched the nurse wheel her out and the tribunal murmuring to one another. Ellen tried not to appear too hopeful or the reverse while she gazed out of a high window at a treetop entwined with powerless coloured light bulbs. Eventually Jack Cremorne said 'Any idea how long you're likely to be? Our parking's nearly up.'

Ellen was sure this provoked the chairman to say 'I'm afraid we'll have to defer judgment until it can be put in writing.'

'It isn't only us that wants to hear,' Virginia Cremorne objected. 'You can see Miss Lomax is anxious.'

'I think you'd best be seeing to your car,' the lawyer murmured.

He conducted them out and held the door open for Ellen. Peggy had been wheeled away, but Muriel was keeping her vigil beneath the photograph of quieter times. As the Cremornes marched off with their lawyer, Ellen said 'We have to wait.'

The words made her feel clumsy before Muriel whispered to the nurse 'What have we got to wait for?'

'Sorry, Muriel. I meant me.'

Muriel's whisper was even more piercing. 'Why have we got to wait for her?'

'You haven't. I'm the one who has to wait. Not here, for them to make their minds up. They haven't time today. There are other people they have to see.'

Ellen might have expected those to have arrived, but perhaps they were watching along the corridor. 'I'll tell you the decision when I know,' she said.

She felt weighed down by her mass of words and Muriel's vague patience and the tardiness of the tribunal. 'I'll keep in touch,' she said and turned away, to find that they and the nurse were alone in the corridor.

The impression of a watcher was no more than a lingering smudge on her consciousness. She hurried to the end of the corridor, but the wide stone stairs to the ground floor were deserted too. She was taking the first step down when she faltered with a hand on the chill banister. Muriel's whisper was loud enough to be heard in the committee room. 'Who was the fat girl? Did she think she knew us?'

'Hate the title.'

Charlotte thought she heard or otherwise sensed the faintest rumble of a train worming underneath the basement office. She looked up from the printout of
Take Care
to find Glen Boyd leaning over the partition around her desk. His high straight black eyebrows gave him a routinely eager expression confirmed by his bright-blue eyes, and in general his lean face seemed pared down to essentials: broad blunt nose, wide lips slightly parted for the next remark, round prominent chin sporting today's crop of stubble. Three furrows were sketched on his forehead, underlining how his short bristling hair had started an early retreat. Perhaps that came with the senior editorship of Cougar Books, Charlotte reflected as she said 'You do or I should?'

'How about both?'

'Too English, do you think?'

'Hey, I've nothing against the English,' Glen said while his accent grew more nasally Maine. 'I wouldn't be here if I had.'

'So what is it about it you don't like?'

'Sounds like a caution manual. Caution doesn't sell our kind of books.'

She might have asked what kind he was saying those were, but she wanted to know 'Apart from the title, what did you think?'

'If she can give us enough of a rewrite I'd say we might take a chance on her.'

Charlotte felt disloyal to be surprised. She had been taken aback by how childish some of the writing was, the characterisations in particular. Though she knew there was nothing more pitiless than authorship when it came to betraying any hidden immaturity of the writer – that was why she'd abandoned her own literary plans – she hadn't been ready to discover it of Ellen. 'How much are we talking about?' she said.

'She has the idea, now she needs to make it work. As long as it's nearly the weekend, why don't I tell you more over a drink.'

Perhaps she was too close to the book or its author, and her inability to see how to improve it was why she'd begun to feel shut in. 'I'm free,' she said.

'I'll see you at the elevator in five. Here's a title for you in the meantime.
Bad Old Things
.'

The long-suffering residents of the Pantaloon Rest Home could hardly be described as villainous, even if maltreatment eventually provoked them to wish their infirmities on their tormentors so passionately that their shared imagination did the rest. Charlotte boxed the stack of pages in the file on which Ellen had painstakingly inked the title and her name, and then she stuffed another typescript into her shoulder bag before tidying her laden desk.

Glen was summoning a lift in the corridor narrowed by lockers. A threesome of their colleagues from the erotica imprint Ram followed him and Charlotte into the windowless grey cage and stood in a corner. 'Beats me,' Fiona was saying to Tasha and Niki, who appeared to share her position. As the doors lumbered shut Charlotte thought for an instant that someone else had slipped between them, but only a shadow could have been so thin. She could think a shadow had dimmed the indirect lighting, which was already meagre enough.

On the ground floor various Cheetah personnel – editors from Koala and Antelope and Little Deers – were spilling out of the other lift. Beyond the lobby New Oxford Street was crowded too. The side street along which Glen turned beneath a curved blue strip of August sky was deserted, but she'd had little chance to relish any spaciousness when he stopped short of Charing Cross Road. 'Here's my favourite,' he said.

Presumably he wasn't addressing the doorman outside Shelves, who inspected her bag and Glen's briefcase before Glen led the way to the cellar. The wine bar earned its name at once, constricting the steep staircase with bookshelves full of dilapidated volumes. At least the bar was relatively roomy, though it smelled of the musty volumes on the shelves that covered practically the whole of the walls up to the bare brick ceiling. Three businessmen with loosened ties were taking peanuts with their white wine at the bar. A balding man whose grey hair was as dishevelled as the rest of him was inspecting the books with such dissatisfaction that Charlotte guessed he was a bookseller. 'Shall we get a bottle of red?' Glen suggested.

'If you'll be drinking more than half.'

'However it works out,' he said and, once they were ensconced at a corner table, gently fended off the share of the price she tried to hand him.

'That's fine, Glen. That's even finer. You have some.' When he moved the bottle of Argentinean Malbec to his own glass Charlotte said 'Why is here your favourite?'

'I like dreaming how it used to be. You could publish anything that took your fancy and if it tanked, nobody would give you too much of a hard time. I think I'd do a better job than some of those guys, mind you. No wonder all their picks are buried down here, books you never heard of by writers nobody remembers, and I'll bet most of them weren't even known while they were alive.'

This seemed to intensify the smell of stale books, and Charlotte couldn't help reflecting that their authors must be even dustier – indeed, little more than the substance. She felt stifled enough to admit 'I've a confession to make.'

'Tell me anything you like.'

'It's just that Ellen Lomax – we're related.'

'I don't know any rule at Cheetah saying people can't be too close.' Glen waited for the unkempt bookseller to shuffle to a further bookshelf and said 'I'd say she's less exceptional than you, whatever she is to you.'

'Cousin,' Charlotte said and made her smile quick.

'It could work to our advantage,' Glen said, holding up his glass until she raised hers. 'You can say whatever she needs to hear.'

'Anything in particular?'

'Hey, no call to get protective. She wants to be published or she wouldn't have sent us the book.' He replenished the glasses, though Charlotte had by no means emptied hers, and said 'You won't be making her do anything we mightn't have to do ourselves.'

'I don't think I follow.'

'That's because officially you aren't hearing this till next week. Now we're part of the Frugo Corporation we need to look at books the way they do.'

'Which is . . .'

'Instead of buying books and then figuring out how to market them we have to turn it round. Unless you're sure how we can market it, don't make an offer.'

'Is that how they buy products for their supermarkets?'

'Same deal, or will be. They want Cheetah to produce books they can sell in every branch. They're going to be expanding into books there too.'

The room felt darkened and shrunken, but perhaps that was her state of mind. She found his comments so dispiriting that the only positive response she could offer was 'My cousin Hugh works for Frugo in Yorkshire.'

'Maybe soon the whole world will be working for them.' Glen added a laugh that seemed resigned to cynicism and said 'Your family for sure.'

'Not my cousin Rory. He'd starve first.' She took a mouthful of wine before asking 'So how do you think we can market Ellen's novel?'

'You tell me.'

'Well, I think it reads as if she knows her subject and cares about it too.'

'No, I mean sell the book to me. I'm a buyer. Thirty seconds or less.'

Charlotte felt boxed in by the dull dim faded volumes and his insistence. She didn't know how many seconds it took her to think of saying 'It's about people getting their own back.'

'That could sell. What kind of people?'

'Old folk who've been treated badly because there's nobody to look out for them, and so they have to discover their own power.'

'I'm just hearing old. I guess we're stuck with that, but why should I want to read about old guys in a home?'

'Because there are a lot of people in that situation?'

'No use going for my better nature. I'm shopping for product, not donating to charity. Don't hand me a collecting box.'

'Because your parents might be like that one day? Yours and everyone's.' His relentlessly expectant look had begun to peeve her. 'You might too,' she said.

'No point in giving me a hard time. We're talking fiction here. Guilt never sold that if it ever sold any kind of book.'

'It's about how you'd like to be when you're old,' Charlotte said in some desperation. 'Not as helpless as you'd be afraid to be. Able to fight back.'

'Me, I just want a quiet retirement on all the money I'll have made with books that sell. And by the way, your time ran out a while back.'

'You're supposed to be enthusiastic about her book,' Charlotte said and downed some wine to douse her anger. 'Your turn.'

'Hey, I'm only trying to show you how we'll have to think. I'm your friend, remember. Every book will need to have a concept we can package. Let's find one here.'

Charlotte was distracted by the bookseller, who had lifted a large book of English landscapes off a shelf only for the yellowed photographs of vanished views to sprawl out of the binding. As the man thrust the handful of images between the dilapidated covers and dumped the infirm volume on the shelf she said 'You start.'

'Try Sorcerous Seniors Strike Back. Magic's always going to sell, people need fantasy even if they know it's bullshit, and there's your revenge theme as well.'

'Don't you think it sounds like a comedy?'

'Sure. It should. That's what it needs to be.'

Charlotte had found Ellen's attempts at humour painfully facetious, by no means an unusual reaction to manuscripts she had to read but in this case uncomfortably personal. 'You think she could bring that off,' she said.

'I guess you'll do whatever it takes to show her how. Keep it black. Shock the readers, even the ones that think they can't be shocked. Get them arguing. Make it a book everyone will have heard of and won't want to say they haven't read.'

Charlotte wasn't sure how much of his enthusiasm could be ascribed to the wine, especially when he said 'Take the nurse who ends up incontinent. It's like your cousin doesn't want to admit she's writing about it. I'd want to see him suffer a lot worse. In public would be better too.'

'You don't think that's too basic.'

'The word is don't risk sales by aiming too high.' Glen laid a hand on her wrist while he said 'Listen, you're the editor. Tell me to shove my suggestions if you've got other ideas.'

'I wouldn't be so rude.'

'Hope you don't think I am,' he said before transferring his hand to his glass. 'The guy they turn blind, now. I figured they could do it to him when he's speeding in whatever snazzy car he owns.'

'Won't that seem too vindictive?'

'Depends how much they had to put up with. How about the woman who's in her second childhood gets raped by him? Or even a gang rape. Just so we've enough reason to wish the worst on the bad guys.'

Charlotte felt as if someone were wishing claustrophobia on her. Even if the cramped inadequately lit place that Glen was stuffing with ideas was her mind, the low dim room shrunken by the mass of books had become far too similar. 'Your title makes it sound as if that's them,' she said.

'
Bad Old Things
?' Having savoured it like another mouthful of wine, he said 'Nothing wrong with them being wicked if they were treated bad enough. The guy that ends up crippled like the woman he keeps tripping up, maybe they should make him get outrageous with his stick.'

She wondered if he would ever propose a change that she might simply agree with. 'That's a bit incorrect, isn't it?'

'Then maybe your cousin should target the public that's sick of correctness. If anyone objects, that's publicity too.'

'I'll have to see what she thinks.'

'Well, sure, and there's another point you need to put to her. I don't believe the story yet. It needs a better gimmick.' Glen emptied the bottle into his glass when Charlotte covered hers. 'Try this,' he said. 'Someone new moves in and sees how they're all being treated, and she turns out to be a witch.'

'Perhaps she could be the thirteenth resident.'

'I love it. Great idea. Now you're on the wavelength.'

Charlotte had been joking if not hoping the proposal would strike him as a step too far. As she strove to hold her expression neutral she felt watched, not just by Glen. The bookseller was kneeling in front of a shelf, and everyone at the bar had their backs to her. Peering about only seemed to bring the book-laden shelves closer, and she could have imagined that the earth around them was pressing them inwards – that the dimness adumbrated a seepage of earth. She could almost have thought that its smell was overtaking the odour of books. She was fending off the impressions as Glen said 'We ought to be writing some of this down. I'll email it to you tomorrow, all I can remember.'

He drained his glass and raised the empty bottle. 'Shall we celebrate?'

'I think I've had enough, thanks, Glen.'

'Better eat, then,' he said and recaptured her wrist. 'Let me buy dinner.'

She felt as if he were shackling her under the earth. 'Can we make it another time?' she murmured. 'I wouldn't mind heading for home.'

'Whatever's good for you. Let's make it soon, though, yes? How's next week?'

'I should think it's fine.'

'Look forward to it,' he said or advised, relinquishing her wrist. As she stood up he said 'Not finishing your drink?'

'It's yours,' Charlotte said and hurried to the stairs, where a musty breath caught in her throat. The open air was less of a relief than she had anticipated; the length of blue sky looked clamped by the roofs, brought low by them. 'See you on Monday,' she said as soon as Glen appeared, 'and thanks for everything.' As he set out for the car park she turned towards Tottenham Court Road, only to remember that the train was underground. She didn't need to understand her yearning to be in the open and closer to the sky. The train was quicker than the bus, and once she was home she could go on the roof.