Virtue (31 page)

‘No.’

Mike looks up from the screen, says, ‘So there’s been all this stuff coming in, and you thought it didn’t mean anything.’

My head is splitting despite the ibuprofen and the tea. ‘No,’ I say wearily. ‘I’m sorry, but it didn’t.’

‘Why on earth not?’

I lean my elbows on the desk and my head in my hands. ‘Because they usually go away after a while.’

Now he’s really giving me the look. If he hadn’t just hauled me out of a bunch of Millwall’s finest, I might be a bit hacked off at being treated like a stupid teenager.

‘They usually go away after a while,’ he repeats slowly. ‘Now, just talk me through all this. Your friend makes a habit of getting these?’

‘Um.’ I can’t think of any way of ameliorating the answer, so I finish, lamely, ‘Yes.’

Then I say, ‘Not all the time. Just when there’s been something in the news. Anniversaries and that.’

‘And,’ he says again, ‘it never occurred to you to tell anyone?’

I slap a hand hopelessly down on the desk. ‘Mike, her mother used to get this sort of thing all the time. Well, obviously not emails, but she’d get letters in block capitals practically every day, and no one ever actually followed through. And my mother gets the odd one too.’

‘Your mother.’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Who?’

‘Grace Waters. But we don’t talk.’

Mike does a little grimace. ‘I’m not surprised. You don’t seem like you’d be exactly compatible.’

‘Thank you.’

He turns back to the screen. ‘So you think that “I know where you live” is a normal sort of anonymous email to get, do you?’

I attempt a shake of the head, stop when tears of pain spring to my eyes. ‘No, of course I don’t. But this sort of stuff is always meant to scare you, and if you let yourself be scared, they’ve won, haven’t they?’

‘And “I wish you were dead instead of her”?’

‘Well, they probably do. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to do anything about it.’

‘Good God, woman.’

He runs the cursor down Harriet’s inbox, glancing at the subject space as he does so. Subject: You should be ashamed. Subject: Why don’t you kill yourself? Subject: Disgusted. Subject: Better look behind you. Subject: You’re no Lady. Subject: If I had a daughter like you, I’d have drowned her at birth. Subject: She didn’t deserve this.

Mike shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You know, when I met you, I honestly got the impression that you were pretty bright. And Harriet, too. And now I see this lot, and I begin to wonder. I mean, didn’t it occur to you at all that there might be a link between the break-in and this lot?’

Maybe a glass of water. I go over to the sink and, while I wash up one of Harriet’s paint-stained mugs, say, ‘Well, of course it did. But you can’t be paranoid. The kind of people who write that sort of thing hardly ever actually do anything. They get it all out of their system by writing it down, don’t they?’

He growls. Not the sort of noise you expect to hear from Her Majesty’s Constabulary. ‘Have you ever heard of stalkers, stupid?’

At which point I burst into tears. It’s bad enough being dragged off and concussed without someone calling you stupid.

He’s on his feet in an instant and over by me with an arm round my shoulders. ‘Sorry. Look, don’t cry. That was very harsh.’ He squeezes me a bit harder in that clumsy man-sympathy sort of way. I can’t tell if it’s fatherly or something else. Whatever, it’s nice. An entirely inappropriate occasion, but I allow myself a small burst of feeling horny. Well, it’s been weeks since the ocker took off for Barcelona and it’s going to be a week at least till he comes back. A girl could shrivel up and die in that sort of time.

He gropes around on the counter, finds some kitchen roll, tears a bit off and holds it to my nose. ‘Come on. Blow,’ he says, and suddenly I feel all little and pathetic, and I want looking after. So I cry for a bit, and then I spin it out for a bit longer because it’s nice being comforted for a change.

‘Anna, it’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘Now I know what’s going on, it’s only a matter of time before we pick up whoever it is and things get back to normal.’

‘But I don’t understand why they tried to grab me,’ I wail. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.

Mike pats me and says something that sounds suspiciously like ‘There, there,’ then continues, ‘it’s just bad luck. If they are a stalker, they’re obviously not a very good one. Look. Why don’t I make you a cup of tea?’

A man who makes cups of tea. A man who saves you from skinheads and makes you cups of tea. I could get used to this. Well, maybe not the skinhead bit, but it’s nice to know he can do that if needs must. ‘Okay,’ I snuffle. Go over and curl up on the sofa. Yawn.

‘When’s Harriet due back?’ he asks as he fills up the kettle. Looks at the pile of mugs on the draining board, pulls a face and eventually selects the one he thinks is the cleanest.

‘I don’t know.’ I yawn again. ‘I think I should get some sleep, you know. I feel really crappy.’

Mike puts a teabag in the mug, finds the milk, spoons some sugar in. ‘I don’t take sugar,’ I protest.

‘You need sugar,’ he replies firmly, ‘you’ve had a shock.’

‘Is that something your granny used to say?’

Blue eyes look up and smile at me. ‘Yes. How did you guess?’

‘Never mind.’

He makes the tea, brings it to me, sits down in the armchair. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I’ve just had a big bang on the head.’

He nods. ‘You’ll probably feel like that for a couple of days.’

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I really think I should get some shut-eye.’

‘Okay.’ He makes no move to leave. I realise that he’s planning to stay.

‘Look, there’s really no need for you to hang around.’

‘Bollocks,’ he says. ‘I’m not leaving someone with concussion on her own.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘And if you’re not, it’ll be all my fault. I’ll hang around until your flatmate gets back. It’s the least I can do.’

I take a single sip of tea, realise that I’m not going to make it through to the end of the mug. Hold it out to him. ‘I’m not going to finish this. Do you want it?’

‘That mug’s filthy,’ he says.

‘You really are a policeman, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t get lippy, son.’

‘I’m not your son.’

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘you’d better go to sleep. And if you don’t do it in an orderly fashion, I’ll have no recourse but to arrest you.’

He picks up the blankey that hides the big burn hole in the back of the sofa where Harriet spilled lighter fuel and then dropped a cigarette a couple of years ago. Sees what’s underneath, rolls his eyes and says, ‘I think you two need some help around here.’

I put my head down on a cushion, say, ‘A woman’s touch?’

‘Not on the balance of current evidence,’ he replies. ‘Do you want the cat?’

‘No thanks. He’ll only try to sit on my head.’

And then he shakes the blankey out over me and, to my amazement, tucks it in. No one’s ever tucked me in in my life. I pull it up around my chin, eyelids already dropping. Just before I slide from the world, I manage to remember my manners. ‘Mike?’ I mumble into the darkness behind my eyelids.

A creak as he sits back down in the armchair. ‘What?’

‘Thanks.’

A single word follows me down into the underworld. ‘’S’kay.’

Search:

Godiva Fawcett

Sources:

All

From:

1969–72

Publication:

What’s on at the movies

Byline:

Ken Griswald

Date:

18 05 69

Headline:

New Talent: Godiva Fawcett

Only just nineteen years old, and Godiva Fawcett has already packed enough into her life to make a movie of her own. By now, we’re all familiar with the tale of how she landed the lead in Stephen Swift’s take on Martin Stack’s bestseller of a couple of years back,
The Power Machine [out this week: see review, p.17]
, as the result of a chance meeting in a coffee shop in London, England. As producer Leonard Wildenstein tells it, ‘I had been over there a week conducting auditions and nothing seemed to have gone right. I had a very clear picture of how Melanie should look and act, but although I had seen dozens of very fine actresses, none had the exact qualities I was looking for. Melanie has a special combination of innocence and sophistication, and it was proving to be very hard to find a real-life woman who could combine those qualities in the right proportions. Melanie is a true English rose, and I had dreamed that England was where I would find her.’

And then he dropped by the Starlight Coffee Bar, and, in true Hollywood style, the Starlight produced a star. ‘She brought me my coffee,’ continues Wildenstein, ‘and the moment I clapped eyes on her I knew I had found my Melanie. I offered her the part on the spot. She was so ladylike and dignified, and yet had such warmth, such a
glow
, to her, that I knew it would work. I had wanted someone completely unknown in the States, but I never imagined I’d find someone who was completely unknown in her own country as well!’

Others who have worked with her on the movie are equally enthused. Fawcett says that working alongside co-star Charles Hollis was ‘The single most thrilling experience of my life. I’ve worshipped him from afar all my life, practically, and I never dreamed for a minute that I would actually meet him!’ Veteran director Stephen Swift is, she says, ‘without doubt the wisest man I’ve ever met’, and the director is quick to return the compliment. ‘I have to say, I wasn’t sure, when Leonard produced this kid, if we were doing the right thing. She had no acting experience, after all, and seemed pretty green to me. But we spent a couple of days shut up in a hotel going over the part, and by the end of that, I was convinced. The girl has talent, I can tell you that!’

But what is she like, this lass from the old country? So far, there have been few opportunities to find out: Wildenstein and Swift have kept her firmly under wraps, and, though lucky residents of Malibu have been able to see a bit more of her during the filming of Kurt Hamilton’s
Beach Bunny Massacre
, due out later this year, we the public have had few chances to judge for ourselves. She’s certainly made an impression among Hollywood’s glitterati. Hamilton fondly speaks of her as ‘my little lollipop’. Veteran actor Jeff O’Malley, soon to star opposite her in Harman and Cohen’s modern western,
Bruck
, calls her ‘Talented, extremely talented. I was unsure at first about what I could get from someone so young, but let me tell you – she’s already taught me a thing or two!’

Wildenstein, one of her greatest fans, says that she is ‘an old head on young shoulders. Godiva may look peaches-and-cream, but underneath is a steely will to succeed, an ambition and a willingness to have a go at pretty much anything that I am sure will carry her through. I truly believe that this girl is capable of anything’. Lara Siskovich, co-star in
Beach Bunny Massacre
, says, only half-jokingly, ‘I truly hate Godiva. She loves the camera and the camera loves her. When she’s on the screen, the rest of us simply don’t stand a chance.’

Meantime, she’s been making quite a splash on the party scene. Young and inexperienced she may be, but this girl’s innate charm has turned quite a few heads. Out here for under a year, she has already been linked with such members of Hollywood’s aristocracy as Marlon Cambridge, Joe Visconti, George Nightingale and Richard Loudon. Sophisticates in the know, it seems, are queuing up for a bit of quality time with our Miss Fawcett. An inside source says, ‘It’s amazing. The girl has such power it’s frightening. It seems that all she has to do is smile and grown men fall to their knees.’

I caught up with Godiva at the modest three-bed hacienda-style house she has been renting in Beverly Hills for the past six months while she decides ‘where I want to make my home’. The house is a combination of easy California charm and a very British kind of elegance; between shoots, she says, she has been shopping, filling her house with antiques and knick-knacks, creating a home-from-home to replace the one she lost at such an early age. ‘I need to have beautiful things about me, Ken,’ she says in that quaint and impeccable British accent that has won her so many admirers. ‘It’s not just that I’m an artist and need the tranquillity of art about me, it’s because, although I’ve adopted America as my home and love everything about it, I’m English to the core. The English have a very strong aesthetic sense, as you can tell from the interiors of our homes, and my mother, particularly, had a wonderful eye for interiors, which I’ve inherited.’

Over the very English ritual of afternoon tea, served by the pool in a delightfully shady hibiscus bower, she continues, ‘This has just been the most amazing time for me. I’m still pinching myself. People have been so very, very kind. I still can’t believe how much they seem to have taken me to their hearts.’ She gazes at me with those famous emerald eyes, and I can understand, myself, how this child-woman, with her maturity way beyond her tender years, can have cast such a magical spell over so many of Tinseltown’s harder hearts. She offers me an English muffin – ‘a little luxury from home’ – and says, ‘The thing is, there are so many more opportunities for a girl like me out here, and I just love the people, but at heart I am still the plain little English girl I always was. Sometimes I just long for those cool, damp mornings, the mist on the fields, the great oak trees, the smallness of everything. There are times when I long for a good old-fashioned winter evening toasting crumpets over an open fire. It’s the simple things I miss.’

So if she had the chance to go back, would she take it? ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. I’m so happy here, and with the work I’m doing, I can’t see that it would make sense at the moment. Anyway,’ she says, and fixes me once again with those eyes, ‘tell me about yourself.’