Holly Lester (6 page)

‘Is he very left wing?'

McBain scoffed. ‘Of course not. He's the epitome of the new party; I don't think he has any ideology at all. He loves politics for power, and power for power's sake.'

‘How has he got so far? He sounds awful.'

‘He's a kind of Rasputin
cum
super-
apparatchik
– he's modernized the party's machine almost single-handed. He's far too arrogant to be popular, even among Labour's chattering classes, and the tabloids could never cotton on to him – they just think he's a smart-assed Jew, or part of one anyway. He's also a “confirmed bachelor”, which to the
Sun
is even worse. Yet I don't think he minds a bit that he's unpopular. He'd far rather be feared than loved. And he is.'

‘But you don't scare easy.'

‘Not usually. When I left the Conference and went back to the paper, I had a message from the Editor asking to see me. Trachtenberg had rung him twenty minutes before to complain about my “unprofessional conduct” at the meeting. Said I was unnecessarily rude to the Arts Minister – provocative, that sort of thing.'

‘What did you do?' Had McBain been more aggressive than he realized? Had his Scots bluntness verged so much on the rude that it had in fact crossed the line?

‘I didn't do anything wrong at all – I simply asked a question. Yet I can see even you aren't absolutely sure. You're thinking “did McBain somehow go over the top?” Don't deny it, laddie – I can see it in your face. But the simple fact is,
I didn't
. Tell my editor that, will you? Because in a funny way, the phone call did its job, by sowing doubt in my editor's mind. When I come to write critically of Labour, some part of him will wonder whether I might not just have some particular axe to grind. Which means that when I do want to write something critical I'll stop and think first. If you multiply this little incident by a hundred and fifty other relatively obscure reporters, you have a highly effective campaign of press intimidation.'

‘Extraordinary.'

McBain shrugged. ‘It's certainly not pretty to watch, I'll give you that. But then again, that's only Trachtenberg.'

‘He sounds a very nasty piece of work.'

McBain shrugged again. ‘Any party has people to do its dirty work. It's just that because Labour makes such a show of being “nice” their henchmen seem particularly brutal. And this seemed to me a bit of overkill.' He was quiet for a moment, but then his face brightened. ‘I have to say, though, that your man was pretty good.'

‘My man?'

‘Yes, your girlfriend's husband,' McBain said with a mix of insouciance and edge which unnerved Billings. ‘Or have things not progressed along those fronts?'

‘If I understand what you're talking about, then I can report that a significant transaction has taken place.' He was thinking of the Burgess sale, and speaking in a self-consciously arch manner in order to get McBain off his back. But his
double entendre
made him grind to a halt, and slowly start to blush.

‘Ah,' said McBain, interest visibly quickening.

‘A painting,' said Billings hastily. ‘She bought a picture.'

McBain looked intently at Billings. ‘You don't fool me, mate. Not one bit.' When Billings stammered unintelligibly McBain laughed heartily. ‘Save it for your priest. I'm not
that
interested.'

‘I'll probably never see her again.'

McBain shrugged. ‘Who knows? I have to say I find the whole thing a bit surprising. She barely knows you – even if she now knows you bare. How does she know you can be trusted? How does she know you aren't friends with a tabloid hack? Like me?'

‘You wouldn't,' said Billings with false confidence. Looking at the gleeful expression on his friend's face, he added more urgently, ‘I'm counting on you. Tell me I can count on you.'

‘I missed my calling. I should have been a door-stepping gossip columnist, a William Hickey
de nos jours
. Here you are, one minute denying everything, the next practically on your knees, begging me not to sell it to the
News of the World
.'

‘You can keep secrets,' Billings pleaded, thinking of the only occasion when he had been forced to rely on McBain's discretion overcoming his nose for a scoop. A stolen Francis Bacon, missing for some twelve years, had been offered to Billings, who had promptly contacted the police. McBain had kept it out of his column until an arrest had been made.

‘Calm down. I can keep secrets.' McBain took a gulp from his coffee. ‘Most of the time anyway, and certainly for a friend. Though I think you ought to know that Marla's been to see Jackie.'

‘Oh good.' He was glad Marla and McBain's wife kept in touch; Marla had always liked her.

‘I mean professionally – Marla's been to see her
professionally
.'

‘What? As a patient?'

‘It was just a consultation. Jackie can't take her on, of course. She's referred her to someone else.'

Billings felt a mix of emotions he could not sort out. ‘You shouldn't be telling me this. It's meant to be confidential.'

McBain shrugged. ‘Listen, James. I may be a journalist, but my ethical code doesn't come from some twat on the Press Council reprimanding me for crossing a line of taste only he can see. I makes my ethics as I finds them; all I can do is try and keep them human.'

McBain swallowed the rest of his coffee and put down his mug. ‘So yes, I suppose I shouldn't have said a dickie bird about it, but I thought you'd want to know. I'm sure Marla's not the easiest person in the world, but at least it looks like she's trying to do something about it. Who knows? People do change; maybe Marla will.'

Billings had once thought the same thing. Returning to England he had tried to keep an open mind, hoping Marla could begin afresh. That was before the milkman, the grocer, the postman, the candlestick maker, the pissed-off pugilist of Kensington Place. Wearily he shook his head. ‘Of course Marla may change. And pigs might fly.'

‘And you might sleep with the wife of the future Prime Minister.'

Billings ignored this and took the mugs to the galley, with McBain following behind. Back in New York Billings had been friends for a while with a man who, thirty years before, had enjoyed a single night of passion with a movie star – had it been Julie Christie? Faye Dunaway? Billings could not remember. Virtually every time they met, this fact would emerge, usually after two or three drinks, and it would be invoked so artlessly that it seemed to be the sole distinctive accomplishment of the man. True, he was otherwise utterly unremarkable; perhaps it was his very greyness which accounted for the relentless mentions of his celebrity one-night stand. Would Billings's own one-off rendezvous with Holly Lester grow to assume the same importance for him? God, he hoped not; he would do better to forget the whole business.

And already his meeting with her in the Wimpole Street flat was assuming the hazy status of a dream. Primrose Hill seemed real enough, but the madcap drive to doctor land, and the weird anonymity of the apartment were growing murky. He had made love to Holly Lester; he tried hard to remember the specifics, but the vivid sensations of his time in bed with her were beginning to fade, perhaps because he had unwittingly pushed that most private act to the edge of public scrutiny in the form of McBain.

He turned to McBain, ‘I told you, I doubt I'll ever see her again.'

Tara appeared in the galley doorway behind McBain. ‘There's someone who wants to see you.'

‘I'd better be going,' McBain declared tactfully.

‘Do they have an appointment?' Billings asked.

‘There's nothing in the book.'

‘Then tell them to go away and come back another time,' he said irritably. He grew more irritated still when Tara didn't budge. ‘Well?' he challenged her.

‘Since she's wearing Lagerfeld today I thought you'd want to see her.'

‘What?' he asked sharply.

Tara looked at Billings without emotion. ‘It's
Miz
Lester,' she said flatly. ‘Do you still want me to tell her to go away?'

McBain led the way out, and was discreet enough, as he left the gallery, not to gawk at Holly. Whoever the designer, Holly looked very smart indeed, in a charcoal suit that had sharp angled lapels and a high collar. Her skirt was fashionably short again, and her stockings were a smoky powdered grey.

She stood in front of a Lawrence Tyson abstract. Hailed in New York as the new Rothko, Tyson was to Billings's mind an inferior mimic, who revelled in all the colours which Rothko rightly had found too unattractive to feature in his starkly beautiful colour studies. Yet Billings couldn't complain, for in the first week alone nearly a third of the Tyson paintings had been sold. The large blotted circle of orange went for a cool twelve thousand and had been the second picture sold.

‘If you fall in love with this one too, I won't let you buy it.'

Holly turned and flashed a large smile, and any prospective shyness between them melted away. ‘Why not?' she asked.

‘Too expensive. It's designed for people who can't afford the real thing. Rothkos fetch seven figures these days, but that's no excuse for these prices.'

‘Don't you set them yourself?'

‘Usually. But this show was a prior commitment. Miles, who used to own the gallery, arranged it. Tyson fixed the prices. I have to hand it to him, he seems to know just what the market will bear; the man's a virtual limited company. I just stand back and collect the cheques.'

‘I haven't got long,' she said suddenly, ‘and I am sorry to barge in like this. Your assistant said you were quite busy.' Tara, the little imp. ‘I would have rung you at home but I didn't have your number. And when I rang here for it, she said she couldn't give it out.'

What on earth was Tara up to? ‘Next time, you might try the phone book.'

‘You're listed?'

The disbelief in her voice amused him. ‘Yes. Probably one of the only people you know who is. And what's a loaf of bread cost, Mrs Lester?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘Sorry. It's the sort of question they like to ask presidential candidates in the States – you know, to see how far removed they are from real life. George Bush visited a supermarket and admitted he'd never seen a bar code reader before.'

‘And that's why Clinton won, I suppose?'

‘The key factor.' He was enjoying this; his nervousness at seeing her again all but disappeared.

‘We'll have to remember that when the campaign begins. I can't believe there are many Tory MPs who know the price of a cob loaf. So it's a useful tip.' She looked at her watch. ‘I must dash. The car's outside waiting.'

‘Terry the Runt.'

‘I'm afraid so. Shall I give him your regards?'

‘No, but you could tell me when I'll see you again.'

She laughed outright. ‘What an effect you have on a girl. That was the main reason I came in here, and I almost forgot. Oh, by the way,' she said, and her tone suddenly seemed artificially light, ‘the other day, when I'd left, did you stay on for a while?'

‘In the flat, you mean?' She nodded, watching him carefully. ‘Only for a minute or two. Why?'

‘Nothing. It's just the owner had some papers there, and he can't find some of them. I thought maybe you'd picked them up by mistake.'

Careful, he told himself, for her reasoning was so transparently preposterous – ‘picked them up by mistake' – that she might as well have asked him outright if he'd gone through Trachtenberg's papers. He felt it very important now to lie well. So he opened his eyes a little more than usual, adopted an ‘aw shucks' look of innocence learned from Marla, and put both hands up in mock-protestation. ‘Not me, guv. Honest. I didn't hang about – the last thing I wanted was to meet the landlord.'

She nodded again. ‘I'd better be off. Are you about on Sunday afternoon?'

About? Looking at her now, Billings thought he would manacle himself to the phone if there were any chance of meeting up with her again. ‘I think so,' he said.

‘You could come up.'

‘To Primrose Hill?'

She laughed again. ‘Don't look so alarmed. No, not Primrose Hill – not yet anyway. But look, I'll ring you.'

‘Do,' he said, trying to keep the pleading note out of his voice. As she walked out of the gallery and down the street, she waved through the front window. He waved back, then turned around with a grin that was only slightly tempered by the gloomy look on Tara's face. He felt elated by Holly's brief visit, but nervous, too. He thought of the document he had taken from the Wimpole Street flat. He still didn't understand what had led him to pinch it, but he certainly understood it was an important piece of paper, and that same instinct had led him to hide it carefully in his own flat. Not in a locked drawer, not in a safe (he didn't have one), but inside one of his many large illustrated books, in this case an edition of Andrew Wyeth (Houghton Mifflin, 1972). Not many burglars looking for a one-page document would have the nous or patience to shake out the pages of every book in his flat's library, which despite Marla's retention of his best books, was not inconsiderable.

What had Holly said about Primrose Hill? ‘Not yet.' What did that mean? He had a wonderful feeling that he would be seeing much more of Holly Lester, and a less pleasing intimation that this meant he would soon be meeting Harry Lester, too.

Billings was beginning to understand why single people dreaded weekends, for his were now long and dull.

Time was he and Marla went for walks, haunted bookshops and museums, and saw the latest flick; now he stayed in by himself, eating cold food and working on exhibition brochures. Even television was no solace; Saturday night's viewing provided nothing to watch for anyone with more than three hours' education.