Secret Story (12 page)

“What do you mean, again?” he objected, though he knew.

“We can see he’s been in a bit of a fight since the last time we saw him, can’t we, Colette?” Vera said, only to have to indicate the scratches on the back of Dudley’s hand. “Was it something you said, Dudley, or did you try and push yourself too far?”

“She was being a bitch, that’s all.”

“We don’t like that, do we? Us girls have to stick together.” As Colette tried on expressions to convey agreement Vera said “Are
you teasing us, Dudley? I thought you must have been in an argument with a cat or a bush on the hill where you live.”

He felt as if he’d strayed into a trap he couldn’t even identify. “You don’t think I could have been out with a girl, then.”

“Not one that’d do that to you. I wouldn’t have thought you’re the kind to do anything to make her, either. Still, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, isn’t it, Colette?”

Colette appeared to take this and much else as an invitation to be one. With more frustration than she could conceal Vera said “What were you wanting to ask Dudley outside when our leader interrupted?”

“You know your magazine, that’s if you’re still going to be in it—”

“I am. Nobody can stop me.”

“Wasn’t that the magazine Shell Garridge was meant to be writing for?”

“Still is as far as I know, or has she annoyed someone so much they’ve got rid of her?” With a show of panic he had to be careful not to smile through Dudley gasped “You don’t mean something’s happened to the magazine.”

“Not the magazine. She’s dead. She drowned in the river.”

He’d wanted to enjoy keeping his secret from the office staff, but he’d neglected to prepare a reaction to the news. The best he could improvise was “How’d she do that?”

“They don’t know yet. She’s supposed to have driven off the promenade. I don’t see how she could have even in all that rain, someone like her.” This sounded too close to an accusation for his taste, and so did “You don’t seem very upset. Didn’t you ever meet her?”

“No.” At once he regretted his caution, which made him appear far too insignificant. “Of course I did,” he said. “She wanted to meet me after she read my story.”

“Was she as great in person as she was on the stage?”

This threw him sufficiently that he retorted “I didn’t think she was much either way.”

“Some men wouldn’t like what she was telling them,” Vera reassured Colette. “You ought to have tried to understand her viewpoint, Dudley. It might make you more of a writer.”

“She gave me some ideas all right.”

“I hope you’ll thank her when you write them. Thank her in print, I mean.” As he struggled to contain his response Colette added “So where did you see her?”

“I told you.”

“You didn’t, you know, and Colette means where did you see her perform.”

He could think of only one answer that seemed safe. “On television.”

“What was she doing on there?” Colette said. “She used to say she was against it because it didn’t really let women have a voice, only what men wanted to hear.”

“I don’t know,” Dudley said and grinned at more of the truth. “I switched her off.”

“I don’t think there’s much to laugh at when she’s just died,” Vera said.

“There wasn’t while she was alive,” said Trevor.

“That’s only your opinion,” Colette told him.

“Then let’s hear yours, sweetheart. What was so great about her? That she made chaps like Dudley uncomfortable? Look at him. I’d say she still was.”

As Dudley wondered desperately how to fend off Trevor’s assistance that had turned into anything but, Colette said “Are you remembering when you met her?”

“What did she do to you, Dudley?” Vera was eager everyone should hear.

“Nothing. She couldn’t.”

He didn’t know what else he might have said to end the nagging
that was picking at his brain if Mrs Wimbourne hadn’t marched out of the Ladies’ in the wake of her perfume. “Are we all ready for today’s adventures?”

At least she was drawing attention away from him—unwelcome attention, not the sort he deserved. He had almost reached his booth when his mobile set about performing the theme from
Halloween
. “Cut whoever that is short if it isn’t an emergency,” Mrs Wimbourne warned him. “We’re open in less than five minutes.”

“Dudley Smith,” he said as if he was speaking from his private office.

“How are you this sunny morning?” Walt must feel that the question had answered itself, because he immediately added “Did your weekend bring any ideas?”

“It could have.”

“Anything you’d like to share?”

“I don’t know yet,” Dudley said and at once meant no.

“Okay, I realise it’s nearly time for your day job. Did you know you were one of the last people that ever met Shell Garridge?”

For moments that felt dangerously prolonged Dudley couldn’t speak. “How do you know that?” he eventually managed.

“You won’t have caught the news, then. Friday night her car ran into the Mersey and she drowned.”

Dudley had to reassure himself that nobody in the office would understand he was lying when he said “I didn’t know.”

“I can hear it’s a shock. It was to all of us. You’ve just seen someone as alive as that, you can’t believe she’s gone, am I right?”

“Something like that.”

“Now I don’t need to tell you we want to give her the best send-off we possibly can. I’m going to ask you a favour.”

“I don’t think I’ve got much to say about her.” The request was so unexpected that Dudley gave it more of a response than it deserved. “I don’t think I’ve got anything,” he amended.

“I wasn’t asking you to talk about her, though I’m sure if you
find you’ve a couple of thoughts they’ll be welcome in the next few hours. No, the situation is we have the only column she wrote, and Patricia put together a solid piece about her. So we were going with all that when Patricia, well, I guess you know how thorough she is. She turned up a real scoop.”

Dudley supposed he couldn’t very well avoid enquiring “What?”

“A complete recording of one of her performances. Apparently some lady taped it for her daughter who couldn’t be there. Ideally we’d have liked to release it with our first issue, only the quality’s too amateur and we haven’t time to get it enhanced. We want to run a transcript in this issue and maybe give the tape away with number two.”

“I still don’t know what you want me to do,” Dudley complained as Mrs Wimbourne gave him a sharp glance on her way to unlock the door.

“All this extra material has thrown the makeup of the issue out of whack. Would you mind very much if we held your story over till the next one? It’s the only item that gives us the right space. We’ll run an extract that’ll make everyone eager to read it, and we’ll put your name on the cover next time and give you the lead spot.”

Mrs Wimbourne let Lionel in and frowned at Dudley. “So do you think you could make way for her?” Walt prompted in his ear.

Dudley might have found it easier to agree if Walt hadn’t phrased it like that. He had to clench a fist on the counter before he was able to say “If it’ll help you.”

“It does more than that, it saves us. I won’t forget what you’ve done for us today. I should tell you one more thing.”

Dudley saw Mrs Wimbourne bearing down on him with the guard behind her, a sight far too suggestive of an imminent arrest. “What else?” he blurted.

“The tape Patricia has is Shell’s very last performance. Which
is perfect except I think she may include some stuff about you in there. Don’t worry, we’ll make certain nobody can tell it’s you.”

Mrs Wimbourne leaned over the glass of the booth. “Are you just about finished, Dudley?” she barely asked.

“Sounds like everyone’s after you today,” said Walt. “Okay, see you Friday at the launch. I’ll get the media to you there for sure. Stay well and creative.”

The next moment the phone was as dead as Shell. Dudley thrust it into his pocket as if it was a secret too shameful for him to acknowledge, and raised his eyes to the expanse of suited flesh that was cutting off his view and invading his nostrils with femaleness. “Everything under control now?” Mrs Wimbourne said.

He didn’t leap up. Even though she’d added to the pressures that had driven him to accede to Walt’s proposal, he didn’t grab her by the hair and lean all his weight on her head while he sawed her throat back and forth on the edge of the glass—not with so many witnesses. He took a breath, although it stank of perfume, and met her gaze. “Yes,” he said.

As she followed Dudley through the stout brick colonnade Kathy saw him cast more than one sidelong glance into the opaque waters of the Albert Dock. She knew instinctively that he was thinking of the girl who’d drowned. His sensitivity was yet another aspect of him she was proud of, even if it meant he would be embarrassed for anyone to learn he’d surrendered his appearance in the first issue of the magazine to make way for a tribute. Outside the Tate Gallery she pretended to be struck by a poster for an exhibition of images of violence—a face so outraged it appeared to have screamed away its gender—so that she could watch him walk ahead. In the pale grey summer suit she had insisted on buying him he looked at least as elegant as she imagined anyone would look. Nevertheless she winced at noticing that he hadn’t entirely unhobbled himself of a limp. She’d persuaded him to confirm that it was the result of the
first fight he’d had with the girlfriend whom she was glad she’d never met and who had left him a parting gift of scratches on the back of his hand. Perhaps now that he was free of Trina he would meet a girl more worthy of him, particularly since he was mixing with people nearly as creative as himself.

She caught up with him outside Only Yoko’s. As he showed his ticket at the door of the Japanese bistro she couldn’t help saying “Here’s Dudley Smith.”

“Don’t care if he’s Jack the Ripper, love,” the guard said, “so long as he’s got an invite.”

When she stepped over the threshold she was engulfed by laughter. As long as it wasn’t about Dudley it didn’t matter. The elongated unexpectedly deep room was stuffed with conversation and crowded with people eating sushi from minimal tables or drinking beer from bottles or pouring one another sake from china decanters, all of which distracted her from immediately noticing that the place was savagely air-conditioned. As the chill settled on her unprotected back above the ankle-length black silk dress, the uproar and confusion produced Patricia Martingale in jeans and a T-shirt that bore a jovial mouth with a river for a tongue. “Dudley, I’m looking forward to hearing you read,” she had almost to shout. “Kathy, I’m sure you are too, or does he read to you at home?”

“I wish he would. Perhaps he will in future. It was my idea for him to read tonight so he won’t be overlooked.”

“I’m glad you thought of it,” Patricia said as a large suntanned man in expensive slacks and a T-shirt like hers dodged fast through the crowd. “Here’s the guy we were looking for,” he declared.

“And this is Kathy, Dudley’s mother.”

“Walt Davenport. Dudley, see where Vincent is? The media are there for you as well. Get yourself a drink on the way, and let me get one for the lady who set you off on your career.”

Kathy accepted a small china bowl as she watched Dudley sidle through the throng to join a young round-faced bespectacled man in the midst of a group of reporters with notebooks. “Will you excuse me if I try and hear?” she said and followed him.

The bespectacled man appeared to be doing most of the talking. As the crowd forced her to meander with frustrating sluggishness across the stone floor, the artificial chill and the heat of so much flesh played a game with her that neither won. She hadn’t reached the group when one reporter shouted “Shall we save it for the press conference? I’m not getting half of this with all the row.”

“Make sure you speak up for yourself then, Dudley.”

Kathy wouldn’t have called that for everyone to hear, but she might have taken him aside to encourage him if a man in an orange shirt and blue trousers hadn’t dashed at him like a footballer intent on a tackle. “Who’s living up to his name at last?” he bellowed. “I’m chuffed for you, son.”

Even when he swung to face the audience, displaying how his ears competed with Dudley’s for prominence, Kathy didn’t immediately believe what she was seeing, or perhaps she only wanted not to. Despite the sudden lull, he hardly moderated his voice to proclaim “He’s my boy, everyone. I’m Dud’s dad.”

Kathy stared at his piebald reddish face crowned with grey skin, at the small eyes that didn’t bother to acknowledge her and that made his nose and mouth look squashed too wide by contrast, and wondered how she could ever have fallen in love with him. The question wasn’t solved by the way he veered towards their son, shouting “Give us a hug.” Instead of delivering one he pretended to punch him and then to be punched. “He got me,” he yelled, staggering backwards.

Dudley was visibly bemused, uncertain even of how to move. Kathy took a step towards him, which decoyed his father’s attention from him. “Is that Kath?” Monty seemed to be asking the
entire gathering. “You’re looking spruce. I’ve not seen you in that rig before, have I?”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s less than fifteen years old.”

“Ooh, that was a low one. Call a copper. I’ve been assaulted.” Dudley’s father doubled over while he said this, then sprang up. “His mam wants you all to know I haven’t been around as much as I could have been, but I wouldn’t have missed this any more than she would.”

“Just most of his growing up,” Kathy said almost to herself.

“I wasn’t that out of the way, was I, Dud? I used to take you places till I went off touring. Anyway, I’m back where I belong now. I’m discovering me Scouseness.”

Kathy found the way his Liverpool accent thickened intermittently almost as unbearable as the sight of him beside their son, especially since Dudley seemed frozen by awkwardness. “Where are you telling everyone you belong?” she couldn’t resist enquiring.

“That’s up to him to say, isn’t it, Dud? Reckon I’ve got anything to do with where you are now?”

Dudley cleared his throat and mumbled in it, and tried again. “I expect you started me off writing.”