Full Stop (10 page)

John Tracey poured himself a glass of wine, put down the bottle and picked it up when he remembered Loretta. ‘More?'

‘Not this minute,' she said, aware that his tolerance of alcohol far outstripped hers. She did not want to wake up with another headache.

‘I mean,' said Tracey, topping up her glass as though she hadn't spoken, ‘I was at Oxford with the bloke. How do you think I feel, grubbing around for dirt on a con ... a contemporary of mine?'

Loretta said, bewildered: ‘You were at Oxford with Bill Clinton? I didn't know that.'

Tracey drank some wine. ‘I'm not saying I
knew
him but we were there at the same time. Haven't I ever mentioned it?'

‘No. Did you meet him?'

‘I
think
he went out with a friend of mine. I remember her going out with a Rhodes Scholar, big bloke with fair hair who was very into politics. I may have met him at a party at Univ.'

Loretta frowned. ‘I don't quite see what you're saying. You don't want to write about him just because you happened to be at Oxford at the same time? Isn't that a bit... tenuous?'

Tracey scowled. ‘Either you see it or you don't, Loretta. The guy's practically the same age as me –'

‘Give or take a year or two.'

‘When you get to our age –'

‘Which I'm not.'

Tracey ignored this reminder that he was nearly ten years older than Loretta. He was in good shape for his age, his hair having turned grey so long ago that it didn't seem to have anything to do with advancing years, his face craggy and
attractive if not conventionally handsome. He said irritably: ‘What I'm saying is, even if I don't actually know him, he's one of my generation. The Sixties.'

‘The Sixties?' Loretta was startled. She had never heard Tracey make this claim before; on the contrary, perhaps because he was a mature student, going up to Oxford in his early 20s after leaving school to work on a local newspaper, he had always expressed a degree of mild contempt for the sit-ins, demonstrations and revolutionary rhetoric of 1968. His attitude was incomprehensible to Loretta, who had watched enviously from Gillingham Girls' Grammar School as
les évènements
unfolded in Paris and her friends' older siblings went by coach to London to take part in demonstrations against the Vietnam war. She wondered what had prompted this
volte face;
surely not the reflected glory of having been at Oxford at the same time as the President?

‘Wait a minute, John,' she said, ‘I'm not being deliberately obtuse, I just don't see why you feel this ... this personal attachment to Bill Clinton. What about Whitewater? Are you saying there's nothing in it?'

Tracey made a dismissive sound. ‘Whitewater, smoking bimbos, Vince Foster — what's it actually amount to? What you have to appreciate, Loretta, is that the Right in this country aren't used to being out of office. They'll do
anything
to get back. This is not about some piddling little loan company in Arkansas, it's about the elections in October. It wouldn't surprise me if the Republicans take the Senate and then Clinton's really fucked. Health care, you can forget it.'

Loretta waited but he didn't add anything. ‘So why don't you ring up the foreign desk and tell them that's the story?'

As though she had said something incredibly naive, Tracey said: ‘Times have changed, Loretta, this new foreign editor's not interested in what his reporters think. He gives you a story and you're supposed to go out and stand it up. It doesn't matter how you do it as long as you don't invade Princess Di's precious bloody privacy.'

‘What?'

‘The Princess of Wales's private life, it's the one thing nobody on the
Herald's
allowed to touch. It's ludicrous, given what everyone else writes about her, but it's the one absolute no-no, even if I find out she's been bonking Clinton. Which she hasn't, as far as I know. Dirt on Bill's what he wants, and I'm here to get it. Or Hillary, of course — he doesn't care which.'

He fell silent after this not altogether lucid speech, picking up his fork and chasing a cold sauté potato round his plate. Loretta watched, eyes narrowed, wondering how best to penetrate his mood of volatile introspection. ‘John,' she said finally, ‘there's something I –'

‘What's the line on Hillary, by the way?'

‘The line?'

‘The sisters. What's the feminist line on Hillary?'

Loretta made a little gesture of annoyance. ‘I don't know there is a line. If you want my personal opinion, she seems very capable but I'm not comfortable with women who derive their power... whose power is contingent on someone else. And it's not as if he gave her Defence, is it? Health's traditionally a women's issue.'

She watched him fumble in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, take one out and light it without going through the usual ritual of asking her if she minded — not that it usually made much difference. He showed no sign of having heard what she'd just said, indeed he had behaved throughout the meal so far as if he was only intermittently aware of her presence.

The evening had got off to an umpromising start, with Loretta arriving at the restaurant a few minutes late to find Tracey hunched lugubriously over a whisky at the bar. She kissed his cheek, apologised for being late and tried to lighten the atmosphere with a remark about the painting behind the bar. It was a pastiche Tuscan landscape with a foreground of noses, each of them allegedly belonging to a celebrity — painters, actors, writers.

‘I can never remember what Pascal said about Cleopatra,' she observed to a blank look from Tracey, who obviously hadn't the
least idea what she was talking about. ‘You know, about the history of the world being different if her nose had been shorter — or was it longer?'

His response was a rather ungracious demand to know why she hadn't returned his call when she got back to the flat, even though he hadn't asked her to. ‘I was beginning to think you weren't coming,' he said, looking at his watch. ‘I told you half past seven.'

‘Oh for God's sake,' Loretta responded, resisting the temptation to blurt out that she was late because she'd had to deal with an obscene caller who wanted to know if she did
fellatio.
‘Let's see if our table's ready.'

Since then she had listened sympathetically to a lengthy account — outlasting their starters and main courses — of Tracey's problems at the
Sunday Herald.
She now knew about the clampdown on expenses, the rigid imposition of a five-day week on reporters used to working four (at most), the hard-faced people brought in from the tabloids ... Making a fresh attempt to divert his attention from himself, Loretta pushed aside her empty plate, folded her hands on the table and said seriously: ‘I need your advice, John. A man's been phoning the flat, he's done it twice so far –' She stopped, suddenly realising the significance of something Michael had said in his latest call.
You've been out, I tried your number over and over
... If he was telling the truth, he couldn't have been watching her or shadowing her at the Metropolitan Museum. Instantly a warm glow of relief suffused her, making her realise how uneasy she'd been.

Tracey was staring at her. ‘What man? What are you talking about?'

Loretta said, ‘I'm coming to that,' but her internal dialogue had thrown her off course and she found herself unintentionally starting in the middle. ‘There's an outside chance he's a friend of Toni's, I don't want to ask her outright because of what it says in the phone book. And it doesn't really matter because the police are bugging the phone, they would've traced his number this evening if I hadn't –'

‘Bugging the
phone?
' She had his full attention at last, his expression revealing how startled he was by her garbled version of events. ‘Loretta, you only got here
yesterday.
How come all this — you didn't mention any of this when you rang last night.'

‘You were rushing off somewhere. I didn't want to worry you.'

He rolled his eyes upwards. ‘Another wild goose chase. Another man who knows a woman whose sister
might
have been propositioned by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas.'

Loretta said: ‘John,
please.'

‘Sorry. What's he want, this bloke?'

‘I suppose he's your common-or-garden obscene caller.' Loretta hadn't expected to be embarrassed but she felt her cheeks flush. She picked up her fork, turned it sideways and, in desperation, pretended to read the maker's name.

‘Meaning what exactly? What colour knickers are you wearing? That's the standard one, isn't it?'

‘Is it? To be honest I didn't realise at first, not the first time he called. His questions weren't ... I mean, they were weird, all about whether I'm an English rose –'

‘An English
rose?
Doesn't sound very obscene to me.'

Loretta snapped: ‘That's what Lieutenant Donelly said. If you must know, I put the phone down tonight when he asked if I did oral sex. Is that obscene enough for you?'

‘Sorry, Loretta,' he said contritely. When she didn't respond he leaned across the table and touched her arm. ‘Come on. I've said I'm sorry.'

She shrugged his hand away. ‘It's OK, I can handle it.'

‘Maybe you can but ... Here, have another drink.' He refilled both their glasses. ‘OK, go back a bit. You say this chap may be a friend of
Toni's?'

Loretta sighed. ‘I don't know. It says in the phone book you shouldn't tell anyone, not even your best friend, which of course she isn't — she came to supper a few times in Oxford and we went to a couple of exhibitions but we're hardly
close.
I
don't think I'd have been so upset,' she added unguardedly as a waiter cleared their plates, ‘if it hadn't been ...'

Tracey waited. When she didn't complete the sentence, he said encouragingly: ‘If it hadn't been for what?'

‘Well, say it
is a
friend of Toni's, that means he knows her address.'

‘You mean he knows where you're staying? You're worried he might come round to the flat?'

Loretta lowered her voice. ‘Not necessarily to the flat.'

‘I'm not with you, Loretta.'

‘I just — oh God, you're not going to believe this. This afternoon, at the Met, I had the feeling I was being — watched.' She frowned, realising she had watered the story down. ‘Followed,' she added quickly.

‘Followed.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you think it's the same bloke?'

‘Yes.
No.'
She was confused, remembering what she'd worked out about Michael a couple of moments ago. ‘How should
I
know?'

Tracey said: ‘You're not going to like this, Loretta –'

‘But?'

He grimaced. ‘You have got an unusually vivid imagination. OK, obviously the phone calls are real, I'm not denying that. But they've upset you, anyone can see that, and maybe you're... not exactly
imagining
things. Jumping to the wrong conclusion. You're an attractive woman –'

‘Thanks.'

‘— and it's hardly surprising if men look at you. Maybe you don't usually notice but this time, because you were feeling jumpy ... Remember the time we went to Rhodes and you accused the waiter at that taverna –'

‘What'
That was
ten years
ago. More. And he definitely touched my breast.' She sat back in her chair, her hands gripping the edge of the table. ‘I can't believe you're bringing it up
now.
' The incident he was referring to had taken place on their last,
disastrous holiday together, only a few weeks before they separated, and Loretta hadn't given it a thought for years. ‘What's wrong with you tonight?' she asked crossly.

To her surprise, Tracey ground his second cigarette out and raised his hand to his forehead. ‘I don't know. Now you mention it I do feel a bit—I don't know how to describe it. Maybe it's the heat.'

Loretta said unsympathetically: ‘It isn't hot in here and if you've got a headache you shouldn't be drinking red wine.'

‘It's not a headache — not exactly.'

Loretta stared at him. ‘You've gone very pale. You're not going to be sick?'

‘Um — I hope not. Sorry, Loretta, I think I'd better go to the gents. You didn't happen to notice it on the way in?'

She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I'm sure we can find out.' She peered over her shoulder in search of their waiter. When she turned back, Tracey had lowered his head and was mumbling something too low for her to catch.

‘What's the matter? Do you feel worse?' She glanced in alarm at the empty wine bottle, thinking he couldn't possibly be drunk on half a bottle of house red and a couple of whiskies at the bar while he was waiting for her. ‘John, can you hear me?'

He lifted his head, stared at her without focusing for a few seconds and slumped in his chair. Loretta started to get up, caught sight of their waiter and signalled urgently for him to come over.

‘Is your friend all right?'

She bit back another sarcastic reply. ‘I think he's ill but I don't know what... Could you get me the bill? Quickly?'

‘Sure.' He moved away and she reached across the table to grasp Tracey's forearm through his jacket. ‘John,' she said urgently, trying to rouse him. ‘I've asked for the bill. We're leaving in a minute, maybe some air ...' She recalled what it was like outside, the sticky heat which had settled on her during the taxi ride to the restaurant, and thought it might actually make him worse. But the only thing she could think of was getting him
back to his hotel as soon as possible and asking reception to call a doctor.