Full of Money (14 page)

A man and woman approached. Esther recognized Rupert Bale from television. ‘Mr Davidson,' he said, ‘you have just guided us along such a spiritual journey. Hindemith – an enigma, yet brilliantly decoded by you. Oh, forgive: I'm Rupert Bale. I do some arts TV, you know. And I hear from the producer that you'll be joining one of our panels soon. Marvellous. This is Dione Pellotte. We're both nuts about Hindemith.'

‘I'm Esther Davidson,' Esther said.

‘Are you a Hindemith fan, too?' Bale asked.

Esther spun her word hoard and let whatever wanted to come out come out in whichever order it wanted to: ‘He's full of semblancing yet also of sublime interaction and tact,' she said.

‘Exactly,' Bale said.

‘What's it mean?' Dione said.

‘We come to many concerts,' Bale said.

‘You're police, aren't you?' Dione asked Esther.

‘This evening is not about me but about Gerald and his wonderfully accomplished colleagues,' Esther said.

‘I was impressed by the last
A Week in Review
,' Gerald said. He sat hunched and resting, before packing his bassoon. Did he look deficient without the instrument actually in his mouth? Other players called au revoirs as they left.

‘You don't mean the gig with that fucking Sandine tart serenading Rupe's crotch, do you?' Dione said. ‘They discussed a novel –
The
Insignia of Postponement
, or some such daft title – the
Royle Family
and a couple of other things.'

‘This was a programme with pace and focus,' Gerald replied.

‘Yes, well the only pace I wanted to see was Sandine flung out fast on her high-slung tits,' Dione said.

She was about twenty-seven, twenty-eight, slim, not too tall, with good skin, and a tidy profile. A near-beauty, no question. She wore her fairish hair brilliantly rough-cut, probably not at Scissors Movement. Although addressing Gerald, she kept an unbroken stare on Esther, as if amazed anyone could actually
choose
to be a police officer, and therefore should be studied for the explanation. Belinda had done some staring, too. Perhaps Dione's face was slipping into chubbiness. She'd have to watch herself. Crook barons shouldn't have chubby daughters. They ought to be elegant and at a good fighting weight. She wore an excellent dark blue woollen suit, possibly her Hindemith gear, and moderate heels. ‘You had some of Dad's people taken in as suspects for the death of that sneaky journalist, didn't you?' she said. ‘My father's mentioned you. He mentioned a bassoonist husband.'

‘It's something that does happen to me,' Esther said.

‘What?' Dione said.

‘Getting mentioned by people's fathers – if their fathers are of a certain kind,' Esther said.

‘Which kind?' Dione said.

‘The kind that mentions me,' Esther said.

Bale said: ‘My view is that, though somebody's skills might lie in one art only – say music – he or she will probably be able to speak intelligently and in no-nonsense terms about other arts, too. This is why we look forward to your participation in
A Week in Review
.'

‘Of course, you had to let them go,' Dione said. ‘It's just a regular tic by police. Some crime beats you – you can't crack it, so let's blame Happy Gardening Solutions. But not the main man, my dad, because you're scared of him and his influence. You pick underlings.'

‘Your dad does have influence,' Esther said. ‘So does cyanide.'

Gerald said: ‘I feel it would be a narrowing of . . . of, yes, a narrowing of the very soul for someone who excels in one art, such as music, to believe only this art really counts. It is a kind of blasphemy against the general, precious creative impulse.'

‘Are you a tit man?' Dione asked Gerald. ‘Is that why you've agreed to take part? She's not in every show, you know.'

‘Does that disappoint Rupert?' Esther replied.

‘Width of outlook – so crucial in a panellist,' Bale said.

‘Did you ever run across him?' Esther said.

‘Who?' Dione said.

‘The sneaky journalist,' Esther said.

‘I feel that with Hindemith we certainly hear the call of a certain period – say Europe in the thirties,' Bale said, ‘and yet this is also music that bridges so many time zones, so many areas of the world, even the cosmos. Listening to your playing, Gerald – if I may – I could feel both these qualities of the composer. It has been a privilege.'

‘So, where do you go next?' Dione asked Esther. ‘Who will you terrorize tomorrow?'

‘Journalists can stir – can make tense situations worse,' Esther replied.

‘Which tense situation?' Dione said.

Ten

Naturally, Abel Vagrain, author of
The Insignia of Postponement
and other works, realized he could be pulled into something a little dangerous, a little terrifying. Although his new book had been given such an extraordinary boost on television, with all kinds of sweet results, he came to see after a while that it might also bring bad trouble.

But one of the early sweet results was this girl, Karen Tyne. Lithe, conversational, cheerful, straddling him now with a commitedness that surely went beyond mere fandom and hero worship. They had met at a publicity and signing session devoted to him and
The Insignia of Postponement
earlier this evening in a massive Hampstead book shop, Voluminous. Another good by-product of the brilliant, famous/notorious TV coverage was bookshops like Voluminous wanted to cash in, and had organized sales events for Vagrain and
Insignia.
It didn't happen last time: one of his previous books had been featured on
A Week in Review
, but vividly slaughtered then by a panellist called Rex Ince. No bookshops wooed him after that. Things were so magnificently different now.

Karen had bought a copy for him to autograph, and engineered happy chats with Vagrain in his role as a hot, sought-after author. ‘I adored the television item,' she'd said. ‘As a matter of fact, I sort of know Rupert Bale, chairman that night.'

‘Really? How? Wasn't he wonderful?' Vagrain said.

‘Good old Rupert.' The shared interest in Bale had given her and Vagrain a quick, useful route into a kind of familiarity, then closeness. And, eventually, they'd drifted back to her place.

He'd never previously had a one-night stand. He'd
written
about one-night stands, and notably, as a matter of fact, in
The Insignia of Postponement
, although he realized one-night stands might, on the face of it, suggest the total, blood-rush opposite of postponement. He felt especially glad that in the book he had always given his treatment of one-night stands a lot of tenderness, shared joy, sincerity – a fleeting sincerity, true, but perhaps more touching and attractive as a result.

Early on in Voluminous he had asked her what she meant by ‘sort of' knowing Rupert Bale. Explanation: a friend of hers had a relationship going with him – a ‘significant' relationship. This friend was
not
the woman, Priscilla Sandine, who'd appeared with Bale on the show the other night and helped him make the programme fizz. No, but a chum of Karen called Dione Pellotte. Dione, she said, had the significant love affair under way with Rupert Bale, significant and what she termed ‘touched by grievous peril'. Some of the vocabulary sounded quaint to Vagrain, yet exciting – not just
peril
but
grievous
peril.

In Voluminous, after he'd done a reading from one chapter, some short speechifying and many signings, one of the younger women from the audience had re-approached him, holding a copy of
Insignia
. Karen. She was lovely, and, of course, he'd noticed her when she queued earlier for his signature. She said how much she'd enjoyed the TV discussion of his book and mentioned the link with Bale. ‘So I usually look in at the show. Also, a one-time history tutor of mine appears sometimes as a panellist. Ince.'

‘Rex Ince? I've come across him.'

‘Done you damage?'

‘Done
you
damage?'

‘An unfadingly odious jerk. I watch, hoping he'll die on-screen or get hit by double incontinence. But, anyway, that night he wasn't there to taint things. I realized at once that I must have
Insignia
. Absolutely must! I've been reading Anthony Powell, but I'll put that aside.'

Later, when he lay unstraddled by Karen, revelation came suddenly to him. With an
actual
one-night stand, as against an imagined episode for a book, you could not always know while it was taking place that, in fact, it
would
be a one-night stand. A one-night stand earned its breezy, clear label not simply because two people made love more or less immediately they met. The words also clearly meant that the two people never made love again, and possibly never even saw each other again. Vagrain could not be certain he and Karen would never meet again. He might not want such a split.

At the signings, some other people from the bookshop audience had crowded around for a personal word with Vagrain, and Karen declared she must not hog him.
Hog me, hog me! Get your gorgeous questing snout wherever in my confines you like! Snort and grunt over me! Gulp me, chew me, nibble me, swallow me!
But he did not yell or even say this. ‘I'm interested in your reactions to the TV treatment of the book,' he told her. ‘Perhaps a word or two more in a minute, if you wouldn't mind hanging on? I'll just say hello to these kind folk.' As tactfully as he could he closed down his conversation with the other customers and joined Karen near the three-for-two counter. She looked up from the book, smiling.

‘Oh, they're so right,' she said.

‘Who?'

‘On
A Week in Review.
That woman and Rupe Bale.'

‘Right how?'

‘Spot on about the tastefulness and bold burn of the love scenes.'

‘I didn't want to win
Literary Review
's Bad Sex Award.'

‘You couldn't – couldn't ever. Vivid, vigorous, so very credible, never clumsy or gross, always meaningful and unrushed. Even the one-night stands.
Especially
the one-night stands.'

‘You read fast.'

‘Well, yes.
Not
unrushed. I was carried along.'

They talked some more. Then he said: ‘Look, I'm afraid we have to move on. They want to close up.'

‘Oh, dear, yes. Rabbiting away like this, I lost track. I live not so very far from here. It's a fine night.'

‘Well, yes.'

Getting straddled in her single bed had been excellent, and with no problems because, of course, only enough width for one body was called for – his. She, being on top of him, did not demand any of the latitude for herself. In this bed, Vagrain's arse and back required a good mattress foundation, and that would almost do; possibly, plus a little extra on each side of him to give leverage and purchase spots on the sheet for her knees during busy and ultimately very effective thrusts and pullbacks.

Now, though, afterwards, as they lay alongside each other, things became a little cramped. He'd have to remember that for when he wrote again about one-night stands. She put her head on his chest to save space. ‘I expect you wonder what I mean when I call their relationship “significant”,' she said. ‘Probably you'd argue all relationships are significant. Your books are so good on relationships.'

‘The essence of much storytelling.'

‘Do you know the name Pellotte?' she asked.

‘You said it's your pal Dione's name.'

‘And, naturally, her father's.'

‘No, I've not come across it.'

‘He's very big on Whitsun Festival.'

‘I
have
heard of the estate,' he said.

‘Not always good things, I expect.'

‘Drug empire wars with another estate? A journalist murdered, trying to investigate things – found on a kiddies' playground slide? Terrible.'

‘Temperate Park Acres – the other one. And so, this big, bloody, continuous tension affects their romance.'

‘In which sense?'

‘Dione equals Whitsun, Rupert, Temperate. The journalist might have been prying into that, or attempting to.'

‘Ah! Like
Romeo and Juliet
. Classic,' Vagrain said. ‘I can see this is a real situation.'

And, yes, God, it was potentially a brilliant topic for fiction. Classic, yet modernized and taken down a social level or two or ten. Another
West Side Story
, but sufficiently different not to seem like repro/copycat/pastiche. Dangerous, certainly. The journalist's death probably proved it. Wouldn't it be craven to let that deter him, though? In any case, he would be turning the set-up into a story, into fiction, not attempting to expose it in the press. He felt excited by the notion and wanted to sit up. But her head on his chest kept him flat.

‘Dione – scared in so many ways,' she said.

‘Scared how?' he said.

‘Scared for her father, to start with.'

‘
For
her father?'

‘Yes, for.'

‘Not of?'

‘For.'

‘But you said he has a powerful standing on one of the estates.'

‘He does. He does . . . for now.'

‘He's in danger?'

‘Staffers in the firm might object to his daughter dating someone from Temperate – maybe even going to live with someone from Temperate, possibly marrying him. An ordinary girl on Whitsun might – would – get away with having a boyfriend on Temperate. Of course. I imagine it happens all the time. A Whitsun boy and Temperate Acres girl. There's no great gulf fixed between the estates. Not everybody is part of the drugs strife. But Dione is
not
an ordinary Whitsun girl. Really, she couldn't be less ordinary. She is Adrian Pellotte's daughter. He is, to date, the undisputed Number One on Whitsun. And Dione's behaviour and choices have a bearing on Daddy's position and security. Her love affair insults him and all belonging to his firm – that's how some of those members would regard it. This is the crux: all of them feel tainted, except possibly his chauffeur and odd-job man, Dean Feston. Result? Hatred and contempt of Pellotte for permitting it. Perhaps Tasker, the journalist, had sensed this, meant to make something of it. He'd know what ambitious, wild, envious, recriminating people work for these outfits.'