Copycat (35 page)

‘Quite easily, it would seem. They say your results were excellent, so there we have it, on paper – if you have to do it alone, you can.’

‘Can I have that pony now?’ But I knew she didn’t really care; for the time being, this success was enough.

I dabbed at my eyes. ‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’

I wouldn’t have seen the article if Demetrius Hogg hadn’t taken the
Mirror
because he had heard a rumour that something dastardly was afoot.

He didn’t call me, he waited until we arrived for the dinner his wife, Gloria, had organized at their enormous Cadogan Square flat.

‘Look at this –
sensational!
’ he boomed. He spread out the centre pages.

I reeled back with shock. It was libel. It was vicious.

And worst of all it was my lie.

I wanted to hide my face and weep. I glanced at the newspaper with utter revulsion; it could have been covered in maggots.

‘What’s this?’
asked Graham from over my shoulder.

‘Don’t look,’ I begged him, trying to cover the lie with my hands. ‘It’s vile.’

‘Don’t be an ass, let him see,’ commanded an excited Hogg. ‘The more folks see this, the better. You can’t be small-minded now, you’re a star.’

‘The children!’ I cried, appalled by his attitude. How could a man of such taste have such a warped view of the world? ‘How are they going to cope with this –
their own mother was once a
whore?
’

‘It can’t be,’ said Graham, snatching the paper. ‘For God’s sake, let me see what they’ve done.’

‘Graham,’ I cried – this was worse than a nightmare – ‘
what about your job
? You might lose your job over this.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Hogg. How could he stay so calm?

Graham looked up, aghast.
‘But how can this be possible?’
he demanded, ashen-faced. ‘How can they print such blatant lies? Surely they’d know we’d sue? I mean, this says that Jennie was on the game. It says I was kerb crawling down Formby Road. This is mind-boggling. Listen – look –
this
s
ays that’s how we met.’
His eyes were sunk in his head. They were hunted eyes, haunted. ‘We’ll get the law on this right away—’

‘Cool it, my friend,’ drawled Hogg, resting a calming hand on Graham’s shoulder. ‘If you really want a fight we’ll have one and we’ll win, I’d bet on that. But I’ve had two phone calls already from TV stations keen to do interviews, and it’s worth remembering they allege these happenings took place before you two got hitched – too long ago to count for anything. All this publicity means is that Jennie’s appeal is no longer confined to the narrow world of art but extends to the man in the street…’

I snapped back, ‘I don’t need this kind of infamy. Christ, I’m amazed you think I do! Your attitude beggars belief. I can’t have wicked slurs like this printed and not deny them outright.’

What other angle could I take?
If Graham found out that I had used this lie to seem more colourful in Martha’s eyes at a time when I felt her friendship was cooling…

But Hogg, cucumber cool, refused to be convinced and his worldly wife with the glittering black eyes agreed with him whole-heartedly. ‘These days it helps a celebrity to have a chequered past. Look at the rush to claim child abuse. Look at the glamour of a criminal background – nothing too offensive, of course. It’s what Joe Public demands of his heroes.’

‘Christ, that might well be, but there is a difference between child abuse and tottering about in stilettos with a skirt halfway up your arse, selling your body to Tom, Dick and Harry.’

‘But you didn’t do that –
that’s what you’re saying.
So the mystery remains unsolved. Who can tell if it’s true or not? You must admit, Jennie, it’s a far more romantic image than the blank persona of wife and mother.’

‘You might call prostitution romantic,’ I turned on Gloria and told her. ‘I see it as sad and pathetic.’

‘Not the way they’ve got it here. You come across as a real survivor, a vanquisher of the odds of life.’

Damn them both.
This was unreal.

‘But who would have said these awful things?’ Graham was still in shock, stupefied. ‘Who’d be sick enough to go to the press with this sort of crap? And why would they print it without checking?’

Hogg was almost rubbing his hands. He clearly saw this as a golden day. ‘That feud you mentioned, the feud in the Close. Who’s to say one of those guys didn’t go to the papers with this load of garbage in order to make a few miserable bucks?’

‘That’s possible,’ Graham said with a groan, his normally neatly combed hair standing up in tangled disarray on his head. ‘So you’re standing there, honestly telling me that anyone with a grudge can say what they like and get it printed without any comebacks? Come on, get real! There’s got to be some research, there’s got to be some smattering of truth. In this case, it’s just a tissue of lies.’

‘Don’t deny. Don’t agree. Just give a few knowing smiles,’ advised Hogg. ‘Darling, you’re an artist and meant to have a tortured past. These little people have done you a favour. Be wise. Be grown up. Use it to your own advantage.’

‘I suppose it was a long time ago,’ I started mildly.

Graham exploded. ‘
Jennie!
What the hell are you saying? You can’t mean that.’

‘Graham, what else can we do? If we took it to court there’d be more publicity. It could drag on for months, there’d be more nasty lies, the children might be drawn into it…’

‘But, dammit, we can’t just let these people…’

‘Relax, darling,’ cooed Gloria, attempting to win Graham over with her perfect smile. She laid her jewelled hand on his arm. ‘Your wife is about to become a big name. Relax and enjoy.’

To Graham this reaction was anathema. He spluttered, ‘
Enjoy it?
The very idea…’

‘Graham,’ said Gloria gently, batting her long black eyelashes at him. ‘I do understand how you feel. After all, Jennie is your wife and it can’t make you feel good to know your wife was anyone’s for the price of a McDonald’s.’

‘No, no. You’ve got me wrong,’ he tried to explain, while I listened, burning with shame. ‘I wouldn’t care what Jennie was, that’s not the point. It’s the fact that these scumbags can get away with these lies, that’s what bugs me. And what if this kind of libel was used against you, you and Demetrius, how would you feel?’

‘If Jennie’s OK with it, what the heck?’

An aproned woman appeared in the doorway. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ said Gloria. So Hogg slipped an encouraging arm through mine.

I tried to find some calm place, but everything was chaos inside me.
How could Martha have done this to me?
As a punishment after the exhibition? Or was Sam the perpetrator of this great betrayal? Had she passed on this confidence in the way she had passed on so many others? I was cold inside, my tongue tasting the corrosive flavour of a real and deadly hatred. Had Martha always betrayed me, even when I’d thought her safe? For all I knew, the whole Close believed I’d been a
whore and Graham a punter, and the only person to blame was myself.

The food they served was magnificent. Like something you see in the supplements.

The wine flowed and I shivered.

A distinguished man in spite of his shape, Hogg’s deep drawl was authoritative and I watched how his heavy gold watch glowed on his hairy wrist. In the prismatic light shed by the chandeliers, this bald-headed connoisseur shone – he hypnotized us with his stories of places he’d been and people he’d met. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sea-green. And then he turned his attention on me. ‘You rarely see such illusive longings expressed so clearly in a work of art. Some of your sculptures are quite exquisite, they mesmerize with their primitive truths. They moved many people at the exhibition and I feel privileged to have found you.’

And so he went on… and on… and on…

Tipsy already, I drank more of the heady red wine and wondered drunkenly about changing idols. Could I transfer to someone else? Images came together and dissolved as they do on the edge of sleep and gradually I felt some life returning. The numbness that blocked me was penetrated as I sat there watching and listening to the man, my thoughts disturbed and yet letting in some new delight. If I could surrender to love again, to that awful aching, yearning fantasy… If I could break free from this stony prison and come out into the menacing light…

But Hogg?

Did the subject really matter?

The disorder inside me felt like an earthquake.

Could I actually choose my supreme being?

Was it really as simple as that?

I tried my utmost to plunge again – for the sake of my art, for the sake of my soul… I did admire this incredible man who had talked with kings and walked with knaves. My knuckles were white against the cloth as I tried to transfer my passion, so that I could get back to my studio where so much work was waiting to be done.

Martha was gone. She would not come back.

Perhaps I could work for this man’s approval. Perhaps he could love me if he knew how I felt…

This was how I found my strength. I had done it before. I could do it again.

T
HIS WAS HOW I FOUND
my strength. I had done it before. I could do it again.

If only Sam would let me.

When he told me about his outrageous plan I knew he’d gone raving mad. ‘What?
Did I hear you right?
Ask the Gordons for money, after what you did? After going to the press behind my back and annihilating that family in public – quite apart from the fact that we and the rest of them smoked the Gordons out of the Close? I don’t recognize you any more, Sam. You’re turning into something unnatural, they talk about people like you in the Bible.’

He poured another Scotch, his third, quite unfazed by my disgust. ‘A loan, that’s all I’m asking. Just enough to tide us over…’

‘Till when? When will we be able to pay back a loan? And why the hell would the Gordons consider giving us one in the first place? Us of all people?’

‘Because she’s completely obsessed by you, because she’s sworn to be your slave until the day she dies.’ He sounded so bitter. ‘And all that crap.’

I hadn’t told Sam that I’d been to Jennie’s exhibition. I hadn’t told anyone how she snubbed me. When it came to the Gordons he was irrational. Sam, more than any of us, appeared to miss their presence next door, as a hunter might curse the escape of his prey, and this aspect of Sam made me shiver. They’d gone. It was time to move forward. Morosely he watched the new people move in, a couple called Watson with three young boys.

When I got home from work I asked him, ‘Have you spoken to our new neighbours yet?’ I hardly had time to take off my coat before starting on the backlog of work: the day’s washing-up, peeling the spuds, sorting out the coloureds for the machine.

‘This time we will not get involved. This time we will leave well alone.’

I was only asking.

‘Any luck?’ It was a regular question.

He stared at me under folding brows. ‘What the hell d’you think? Of course I’ve had no sodding luck and there’s no need to rub it in with such glee the minute you get home.’

‘Sam, I’m so sorry.’

He snorted. ‘Your ignorant brand of optimism I can live without right now.’

‘We can’t both wander around depressed. This’ll pass…’

‘Shut up, Martha,
for God’s sake, shut up.
You’d have done better to cultivate the lovely Jennie Gordon when you had the chance. She would have made damn sure you were looked after in the manner to which you are accustomed. And how you must be regretting that now.’

I didn’t answer. I carried on clearing up the kitchen. I’d never known Sam sound jealous before – in our relationship that was my prerogative – and for him to be jealous of another woman, when he knew the circumstances perfectly well, was mean as well as callous.

‘Perhaps I should have flogged that to the papers.’

If he only knew what he sounded like. This wasn’t the Sam I had fallen in love with and stayed true to for all these years. I tried to feel pity instead of anger. ‘Well, you failed to destroy Jennie with your first crude efforts. Since your little contribution, interest in her has reached dizzy heights. She’s had the wit to ride over that whole seedy episode, so any lesbian connection would no doubt only add more mystique to her image. Do what you like, Sam. I don’t give a toss.’

‘Dyke,’ said Sam with a tipsy slur. ‘That vamp tried to wreck my marriage.’

And so he would rant and rave, unable to leave old wounds alone; he was irritated by that itchy scab which got worse as he worried and scratched at it. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she did try, but she didn’t succeed, did she? We’re together in spite of Jennie. So why the hell don’t you leave it alone?’

Last night we watched our former neighbour on a late-night chat show with Melvyn Bragg. I imagine all our neighbours watched and I wondered if their reactions were mine, bowed by the weight of a terrible guilt? Did they worry like I did that Jennie might launch into a story that would ruin us all? Bring the wrath of God down on us? Sam watched, slumped forward, drinking in every word. And whenever Jennie spoke, he muttered, ‘Stupid cow,’ while all I could do was marvel at her new-found self-confidence. Seeing her there, holding her own among all those experienced media people, it was hard to remember the Jennie I knew.

She looked so good, so astonishingly composed.

She handled all this far better than I could.

‘Bitch – she even sounds like you,’ said Sam.

In this vengeful mood he had insisted that we drive past her house to see what it was like. Naturally I was reluctant, especially with the kids in the car. What was his morbid fascination? But maybe if Sam saw where the Gordons lived, he might finally manage to let them go.

‘Christ,’ said Sam when we drew up. ‘She’s rolling.’

I just prayed that no-one would see us. This was the worst kind of envious snooping – how ghastly if Jennie were to come out. ‘It’s probably not all her money,’ I said, mainly to calm him down. ‘Graham’s got a management job, hasn’t he?’

Too late – I’d said it. A direct comparison between Graham’s success and my husband’s abject failure. Sam sulked all the way home and Scarlett went on about the field at the back. ‘And it’s got stables,’ she informed us. ‘Someone from her school told Daisy Masters. I bet she’ll be given a pony. Poppy always gets what she wants.’