Virtue (15 page)

No you didn’t, I think. At least, not most recently. Nigel’s red herring has worn off at last, more’s the pity.

‘Nope,’ I reply. ‘I don’t know what gave you that idea.’

‘So tell me.’ Leeza leans forward. ‘Any extras on the menu?’

Her companion is drinking it all in. Hacks often work in pairs on this sort of job: witnesses. He has the sort of hair that looks like a wig: that Elton-style boyish pudding basin that never really looks convincing on anyone older than thirteen.

‘What sort of extras?’ I know we’re totally in the clear. Roy may be a sod, but he’s not a fool.

‘We heard,’ says Leeza, ‘that you could book escorts through this place. Get your dinner with all the trimmings, as it were.’

I sigh. ‘What do you want, Leeza? You’re going to have a lot of trouble making something like that stick, you know.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You could always sue. But mud sticks, as I’m sure you know.’

‘What do you want?’ I repeat.

‘Just an interview with Harriet.’

‘You know I can’t give you that. I don’t have the first idea where she is.’

‘You do, Angie.’

‘Anna. It’s Anna. And I don’t.’

‘Well,’ says Leeza in a tone that’s half wheedle, half bully. ‘I suppose we’ll have to go ahead with the feature we’ve got. The Sunday will love it. You could give us a quote, of course, put your side—’

‘No.’

She starts on the old patter, but I’ve heard it too many times to be taken in. ‘Look, Anna. We’re going to run the piece anyway, so you might as well talk to someone. It’ll look much worse if you don’t put your side of things; perhaps you could put us right on a few things. Give us your point of view.’

I shake my head. Roy is doing the same to the guys from the
News of the World
. Now that his bait is gone, I guess he’s realised that he needs to do some damage limitation. Doesn’t want his precious restaurant turning up in a real-life exposé all of its very own.

Leeza turns nasty. ‘I can fucking destroy you,’ she says. ‘I can put your name all over the papers and have the police watching this place like hawks. All you have to do is tell us where she is. We don’t want to do anything nasty. We just want to talk to her. We know she’s been working here. You don’t think she’ll want to give some sort of defence for herself?’

‘Not to you she won’t, no. She wouldn’t have anything to say to you at all, even if she did work here.’

‘You’re a fucking fool, Anna. I’m giving you one more chance, and then …’

I’m cursing inside. I want to reach out and slap her, but know that this is my route to the front page. ‘No, Leeza,’ I repeat. ‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you. I don’t know where Harriet is, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you. There’s nothing for you to see here, and no story. Perhaps you’d just like to leave now? Your bill’s on us with our compliments, of course.’

‘Oh, no.’ Leeza sits back and folds her arms. ‘We’ve booked a table and we’re staying. And we’ll be back tomorrow night, and the night after that and the night after that until you tell us …’

The kitchen door bursts open with a force that suggests that it’s been kicked from the inside. Harriet, still in her gymslip, with ping-pong bat, tennis racquet, whip and cane in hand, stalks through, shrugging off Shahin, who seems to be holding onto her arm and begging her. A silence so complete we could be wearing headphones falls among the diners, punctuated only by the pop and whizz of cameras. Hand on hip, she marches to the podium, heels clicking sharply on the floor. Steps up, drops the lash of the whip down over her shoulder, looks slowly around to afford every photographer in the place the opportunity to take her best angle.

‘Right!’ she barks, and the customary rustle of adjusted trousers fills the air. ‘You’ve all been very naughty and you’re going to have to take your punishment. So we’ll start with the naughtiest.’ Her glittering eye roves about the room until she spots our adversary sitting by my elbow. ‘Is there a Leeza Hayman in the house tonight?’

My gran, who was the wisest person I ever knew, had a saying that went like this. ‘Leeza,’ she’d say while she whipped up a batch of her famous Victoria sponges (unlike some people, I didn’t have the luxury of a stay-at-home mum, and I spent a lot of time round my gran’s helping her cook for the entire family when they came home from their shifts at the factory), ‘if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then it is a duck.’ Well, if ever I had proof that this was true, I saw it with my own eyes on Wednesday night.

Imagine my feelings on Wednesday when I went out for a quiet dinner with a couple of colleagues. At a so-called restaurant in one of London’s ritziest neighbourhoods, we came across a scene of debauchery that would make your hair stand on end. In a room that was done up to look like some sick version of the classrooms your kids and my kid go to every day, two young women pranced about in gymslips and stockings, spanking the diners.

Okay, you say, these things happen in the world. People have to make a living, and beggars can’t be choosers.

Well, let me tell you something. These girls weren’t beggars. Far from it. These were young women who had been brought up with all the advantages handed to them on a plate. Unlike some of us, they had the best schooling, the best parenting, the best start in life that anyone could want. And who were these lucky young women? Why, Harriet Moresby, daughter of Godiva Fawcett, and Anna Waters, daughter of the famous Grace Waters. Yes.

As regular readers of this column know, I am a huge fan of Godiva Fawcett, and have been pushing, against all the might of the government, big business and the powers that be, to have the people’s will carried out and have her made a saint, or sanctified, to use the nobs’ word for it. Not that they’ll let it happen, of course: she was too difficult for them, with her love of the weak and the needy, and her stint as a UN Goodwill Ambassador showed once and for all that if there was one person who worked outside the establishment and was capable of embarrassing it, it was Godiva.

And if there’s another woman I think should be in line for the honour, it’s got to be Grace Waters. I’ve always said, if I had the perfect dinner party, the two female guests I would really want to be there would be Godiva and Grace. If ever two women deserved sanctification, it would be them. And if it wasn’t for the government’s pathetic excuses – that Godiva wasn’t a Catholic, that Grace is still alive, that it’s not down to him anyway – it would have happened already. They’re saints in my heart, anyway.

So what must these women be feeling now? I know how I’d feel. I’ve tried all my life to do something good, I’ve never been a stranger to hard work, and honesty, and decency, and nor are these two girls’ mothers. And this is how they repay them. When they realised that they had been caught out, how do you think they reacted? Shame? Embarrassment? Apologies for spitting in the face of everything that is moral? No. They just carried on as if it were a normal night in their den of iniquity. I’ll tell you, I hugged my son very tightly when I got home that night, even though I had to wake him up to do it.

Of course, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, so maybe I’m just ignorant, and no doubt the stuffy papers will be falling over themselves to come up with liberal excuses for this behaviour, but here’s what the real people will think. What is the world coming to? What chance is there for our children if people with all the chances can go so bad?

Well, let me tell you something. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do. I met Godiva several times before her tragic death, in fact, I would go so far as to say that she counted me as a friend. She was charming, witty, caring, kind and always happy to help me out. I have never met Grace Waters, but reports say that she is the same way inclined. I interviewed Godiva’s daughter on the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death, and a more proper little madam you’ve never met. Defensive, drunk, foul-mouthed and disrespectful. Waters, who by all accounts has been hand-in-glove with her for nearly ten years, seems to have developed much the same characteristics.

There’s only one conclusion any right-minded person can draw. That these marvellous women made the mistake of loving their kids too much. You can do that, you know. Harriet Moresby and Anna Waters are classic examples of overloved, overindulged children. Spoiled rotten, in other words. Remember this if you don’t want your own children to turn out to be junkies, or thieves, or greedy little slovens. Because if it looks like a slut, and it talks like a slut, what do you reckon it is?

© Daily Sparkle, 2000

Lindsey is reading Leeza Hayman out loud, and tears of laughter are pouring down her face. ‘Because if it looks like a slut, and it talks like a slut, what do you reckon it is?’ she cries, pointing at me and dabbing at her face.

Lindsey, Harriet and I all worked together in Chee’s cocktail and burger bar in Covent Garden when we first came to London. It was Lindsey, in fact, who first introduced me to the joys of tabloid newspapers. Before I started borrowing her copies of the
Sun
in meal breaks, I’d only really ever read the
Grauniad
.

She needs to shout to be heard over the crowd, even though the five of us are squashed cosily together in a four-person booth, and we only got that by dint of fast elbow work and deadpanning. We’re still having to pretend to be unaware of the people we beat to our table, who are standing over us in the baleful hope that they will somehow be next in line when we leave. I don’t know why. If ever a group of people looked like they were dug in for the night, it would be us.

The Bus Stop is heaving, even for a Friday night. We perch on the red plastic vandalproof benches that line the booths, clutching the three magic markers we’ve managed to secure in case anyone wants to do a graffito. Tables consist merely of narrow planks on which to rest one’s drink; there are no ashtrays, cushions or bins and the concrete flagstone floor is littered with fag butts, bits of paper and spilled drinks by the end of the night, waiting to be washed down with hoses in the morning. The only decorative flourish is a digital screen on the end wall, which alternately flashes the word ‘Loading’ and a jumble of asterisks. When you first come in, the door people give you tickets with the time on. Once you’ve bought your first round, you then have to wait an hour before you are allowed to approach the bar again. Still, at least you’re then allowed to buy three drinks at once. ‘A woman making her way in the world,’ I shout, ‘and anyway, it’s hardly Leeza’s place to throw stones. Everyone knows she wrote her first hundred columns on her knees.’

‘And the next hundred on all fours,’ growls Harriet.

Dom says, ‘Have you heard from your brother at all?’ and Harriet shakes her head. ‘I don’t suppose I’d hear from him if there was a death in the family, let alone a resurrection. Gerald is so wet, they’ve got him plumbed into the sprinkler system at Belhaven. Saves a fortune in rates. It would never occur to him to call me and let me know there was a crisis.’

‘So how about you?’ Linds turns to me. ‘Your old girl been in touch?’

I shake my head. ‘Fortunately, she went off to Geneva straight after the party thing. If I’ve got any luck, she’ll have missed the papers.’

‘And if she hasn’t?’

I shudder. ‘I’m having dinner with her on Thursday. I guess I’ll find out then.’

‘Jeez,’ says Lindsey, ‘seeing your mother twice in less than two weeks? That must be a record, mustn’t it?’

I give her a look.

But at least she’s sympathetic. ‘Poor old you. Call me if you get scared, won’t you?’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m in Edinburgh on Thursday, and Friday. But you can call me on my mobile.’

‘Thanks. You’re a star.’

Meanwhile, Mel continues to cross-examine Harriet. ‘So what are they going to do with the body?’

Harriet shakes her head. ‘How would I know? She’s only my mother. Gerald will probably leave it up to the Burges, and the Burges will try to sneak her back into the crypt, only one of them will manage to drop the coffin out of an attic window and crown a tourist underneath or something.’

‘What do you want done?’ Mel, who likes to think of herself as ‘good’ with people – and to do her credit, often is – asks. I think that Mel has a bit of a fixation about death and bodies; she certainly never avoids a chance to ask detailed questions.

‘Well – ’ Harriet polishes off her first sidecar and slides the next along the table until it comes to a rest in front of her, ‘ – obviously she can’t go in her mausoleum now that they’ve gone and got the fan base all worked up. They’ll be trying to break in and cop a feel again. I don’t know. The Fawcett Memorial Trust were on the phone yesterday, suggesting that we hold another memorial service.’

‘Say,’ Lindsey sparks up at this, ‘what a great idea! Then we could all go! I haven’t had an excuse to buy a really extravagant outfit for ages.’

‘Yeah, right,’ says Harriet. ‘Another round of churchgoing is all I need.’

‘Yes, but your mother’s never been a saint before,’ says Mel.

‘It would be brill.’ Dom lights a cigarette from the butt of his old one and drops the butt on the floor. ‘Just think. You could round up all the children she visited and fly them in, and maybe you could get Elton John to sing a song.
Dirty Little Girl
, perhaps, or
I’m Still Standing
.’

‘Yeah, and Geri Halliwell could take some time off from her hectic round of UN engagements and mime to a valedictory address,’ says Lindsey.

‘Yes, and Ann Widdecombe could pull a face for the opposition, and we could all dress up as film roles she played.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ says Mel. ‘Bags I
Beach Bunny Massacre
. I loved
Beach Bunny Massacre
, especially the bit where Godiva runs all the way up the shoreline in a bikini—’

‘And her tits don’t move,’ the three of them finish.

No one seems to have noticed that Harriet has dropped out of the conversation.

‘Who do you think they’ll get to conduct the service, do you think?’ asks Dom.