Holly Lester (8 page)

‘Precisely,' said Holly, as she deftly unhooked her bra and placed it carefully on the neat pile of clothes that was rising on the floor in front of her.

‘And I suppose you had to get the house ready,' he said, picturing her lining up all those chairs in the Primrose Hill downstairs sitting room, laying a table of cold ham and tinned beer, making coffee in a percolator last used at a church fete.

‘I beg your pardon.' Holly's eyes were flashing, not rapturously but in anger. Her fierceness was somehow augmented by her nudity: naked anger, thought Billings dumbly. She snapped at him: ‘You think I was “hostess” for the meeting? Preparing tea? Taking the coats? Showing the way to the loo?'

She shook her head and lay down on the bed, then tucked herself under the covers. She put one hand to her brow and exhaled sharply. Billings said, ‘I suppose I'm being a little sexist.'

‘A little?' She laughed loudly. ‘I'll say. And you have no idea how welcome it is. The press spends half its time portraying me as some Svengali figure, a sort of Hillary Clinton behind the throne.' She gave a rolling giggle. ‘It's an enormous relief to have someone think I'm making tea for everyone. Now will you please get undressed? It's cold in here without you.'

This time they made love slowly, unhurriedly, as if the explosiveness of their first encounter made them more relaxed. Billings pushed the covers off them, and a breeze ruffled the lace curtains through the open window and cooled the room. As he slowly grew more excited, Holly responded in kind; suddenly, as he neared climax, she took her hands off the back of his neck and threw her arms back against the pillow. Then she – what? thought Billings. Yelled? No, not the right word. Screamed? No again, there was too much delight in her voice. She
whooped
, he decided, remembering the apt American term for a loud cry of pure joy. He was so startled by this that he climaxed immediately, and collapsed in her arms, which now enfolded him.

‘I suppose we should have closed the window,' she whispered.

‘Never mind,' he said, and got out of bed to shut it. Looking down, he wondered what pedestrians below hurrying for their post-work appointments with private medicine would have made of Holly's exuberant outburst. ‘Tell me something,' he said, for his curiosity was still piqued, ‘how
did
your lot know about Nichols?'

She reached for her handbag on the floor, and sat up in the bed. She took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

‘I didn't know you smoked.'

‘Do you mind?'

He shook his head. ‘No, I'm just surprised, that's all.'

‘I smoke very rarely,' she said, inhaling. ‘And never in front of the cameras.'

He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘So how did you find out about Nichols?'

‘You simply won't be put off the scent, will you? Since you must know, it's a source in Central Office.'

‘A spy?'

She looked startled, then thoughtful. ‘I suppose he is. Though really more a disaffected Thatcherite who can't abide the Prime Minister. Someone who'd rather see us in than have things continue as they are. You'd be surprised: a lot of Tories feel that way.'

‘But how did you find this spy? Did he come to you?' Billings had film-induced visions of defectors – some powerful, like Ames, the CIA man who sent dozens of colleagues to their deaths; others less so, occasionally even ludicrous, like Michael Bettany, knocking on the Soviet mission front door in broad daylight.

‘Alan got to know him.' She took another drag on her cigarette; like most occasional smokers Billings knew, she seemed to relish a smoke. ‘Same social set.' She jiggled her wrist in a camp parody, then put a hand to her mouth in feigned disappointment. ‘I'm not being very PC, am I?'

‘As you keep telling me, I'm not exactly a model myself. So gayness takes priority over politics?'

‘Not at all. They both want the Tories out – that's the important thing. Being gay is just a shared extra.'

‘I see. A bonus.'

She giggled, then added firmly, ‘perhaps. But there's another spy, more important actually, who's perfectly straight.' She sat up. ‘There's an ashtray in the drawer. Could I have it please?'

He found it, and she stubbed her cigarette out. He asked, ‘Alan is Alan Trachtenberg, isn't he?'

It was her turn to look surprised. ‘Of course. You haven't met him yet, but you will.'

‘Really? Why? Does he know about us meeting here?'

‘Not to worry. He's very discreet.'

This didn't answer his question. ‘It's his flat, isn't it?'

Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know that?'

‘Just guessing,' he said, which was true.

‘You mustn't breathe a word of that,' she said urgently. ‘Nobody knows.'

‘Why does it matter? Whose flat do they think it is?'

‘Sally Kimmo. She's a friend. A very rich friend. She has more properties than I have shoes.'

He recognized the name from the post-box downstairs. ‘And?' he asked proddingly.

‘And she gave the flat to Alan. You have to understand, he hasn't got a bean. His whole life up to now's been politics. And he's not
from
money.'

‘So does he live here?'

She shook her head. ‘No. He lives in Westbourne Grove. With a friend. But never mind that, just don't tell anyone please. I think I'm the only person who knows – except for Sally Kimmo and Alan of course.'

‘And me,' he said a little smugly. ‘But don't worry – Alan doesn't know me.'

Holly shook her head. ‘Sooner or later Alan knows
everybody
, especially everybody who's part of New Labour. You may be a soppy Tory, but you're involved through me. Alan will meet you, mark my words. In fact,' she said, looking at her watch, an elegant Cartier-style model with a thin black strap, ‘if you hang around much longer you will.'

He started, and retrieved his boxer shorts from the chair. Holly laughed. ‘Calm down. I have to go anyway. I doubt you want to hang about and meet Mr Trachtenberg without me. The press call him our Rasputin.'

‘Is he?' Billings was already putting on his shirt, for he had no desire to meet Trachtenberg in a state of undress.

‘Hardly. He's tall, for one thing. And he doesn't service me.' She giggled again. ‘You do.' She said more seriously, ‘He takes very good care of us. And he cares about the Party. Really cares. When we win, it will be as much because of him as anyone else. Except Harry,' she added hastily.

‘
When
you win? You're that confident?'

She nodded quickly, knowingly. ‘I'm certain, though I'd never say so publicly. After last time, it would never do to sound complacent.'

‘Does Harry feel that way?' asked Billings, suddenly excited by the fact that he was able to ask questions every reporter in the country would kill to get the chance to ask. Not true, he realized; it was the
answers
, given so transparently honestly in this borrowed love nest, that they would kill for.

‘He's fairly confident. But he never says so – he's very careful, our Harry.'

Billings couldn't tell if this was affectionate or ironically knowing, or both. ‘And Rasputin?'

‘He's terrified we'll somehow lose. Which makes him absolutely determined that we don't. He won't let anyone get in the way of our winning. Anyone.'

There was a gleam in her eye which Billings found chilling. He had enough self-knowledge to know that he was not a hard man, and enough years in New York under his belt, where ruthlessness was king, to know he didn't want to be one.

‘Blast,' said Holly, standing up to pull her black tights over her lower belly. ‘I'll be late for the charity dinner.'

‘Who's it in aid of?' he asked, thinking of Sudanese victims and Croatian refugees.

‘It's to raise money to send kids from the East End out to the countryside. Poor kids.'

‘Poor countryside, if you ask me. How long do they go for?'

‘Two weeks. We wanted to send them to Wales, but no one would have them. So they stay outside Newbury, near Richard Davis.'

‘The novelist.'

‘That's right. He has a pool at the rectory. Why are you smiling like that?'

He could think of more deserving causes for a charity dinner with the Opposition Leader's wife in attendance, but thought it politic not to say so. ‘I'll walk out with you.'

To Billings's relief, they met no one as they left; his introduction to Trachtenberg would have to wait. As Holly went round to open the Audi, Billings asked, ‘when will I see you again?', trying to keep his tone casual and relaxed.

‘Why tomorrow, of course. Same time, same place. I thought I'd told you.'

‘Told me what?'

‘I've carved out a slot in my schedule. Every night from half past five until seven. They think I'm working out with a personal trainer. I park the car, go into the gym, wait five minutes, then come out again. By then Terry the Runt's in the pub on the corner.' She laughed, and flashed an enormous smile at Billings over the top of the Audi. ‘I suppose in a way you
are
my personal trainer. So don't let me get fat, or the game will be up. See you tomorrow.'

This time he did see her tomorrow, and the evening after that, and the evening after that, and even the evening after that. Holly was away for the weekend in Harry's constituency, but he saw her every evening in the following week as well. And the week after that.

Later Billings was to remember these few weeks (really only three) as ones of singular preoccupation. He must have gone to work in the gallery each day, seen customers, done business, kept an eye on the turnover of the spring show (very impressive, despite the strong pound many foreign collectors were buying), yet later he could not have told you anything at all about these weeks except the anticipation, which mounted through each day, of the Audi's arrival at a quarter to six, the quick drive to the Wimpole Street flat, and the subsequent immersion in each other that followed the shutting of the flat's door.

It seemed illusorily focused, like the passions of first love, and this unreality was accelerated by the very real sense in which Billings found his private world of Holly Lester paralleled by public accounts of it. Press interest in Harry was now intense; the scare given to the government by Jock Nichols's death heightened the attention paid to its likely successor. After the initial round of profiles following Harry Lester's election as leader the year before, things had quietened; now interest flared up again.

Profiles of Holly came out in abundance, too. On Sunday the
Telegraph
ran a piece next to the leader page. Expecting the worst, Billings was surprised to find it cordial, even complimentary. On Monday evening he said as much to Holly. ‘Now you know why I'm so confident we'll win,' she said, ‘if even the
Telegraph
has nice things to say.'

They usually had no more than an hour together, sometimes an hour and a half, at which point Holly would leap up, energized by lovemaking, and rush off to a fund-raising dinner, or a meeting of female candidates, or even occasionally supper at home with Harry and her child.

For Billings, the sex remained compulsively explosive; it seemed to be that way for Holly, too, since she continued to whoop with such abandon that Billings took to closing the window when they first came in. They usually made love quickly, hungrily, conventionally, then lay talking until either Holly had to go or Billings found himself ready again. Physically, he found her simply luscious, the voluptuousness of her heightened by the disguise of a chic veneer of smart, sharp clothes.

And he found he simply liked talking with her as well. Obviously, part of Holly's attraction lay in the fact of just who she was, the wife of Harry Lester. But, curiously, or perhaps naturally, as he came to know her better, it was perfectly normal aspects of their daily lives they talked about most – her work, for example, and how it was drying up as she found herself forced to avoid clients posing even the remotest conflict of interest. Also about his work, and how his gallery business seemed to prosper without enriching him at all. And art, about which she had wild, extravagant opinions, which unsettled Billings with their mixture of insight and trendy lunacy.

Still, the contrast between the public persona and the private Holly was also a topic of conversation between them. One evening Holly lay in the day bed while Billings sat in the corner chair and read aloud from an
Evening Standard
profile of her. ‘It says your first job was serving ice cream on Brighton pier, aged sixteen, to trippers during the summer holidays.'

‘Does it say what my second job was?'

He read on diligently. ‘No. You went to Oxford on an exhibition, and it was all uphill from there.' Meeting Harry in her last year, she took a First in PPE, then did two years at INSEAD (Harry trundled over on the odd weekend, diligently showing up, like the young Richard Nixon wooing his own wife, even when Holly briefly dated a fellow student), before joining McKinsey at the ripe age of twenty-three. She married Harry two years later, and they bought their house in the then-raffish Primrose Hill. Their youthful social circle included Philip Larches, now tipped to be Attorney General but then a mere apprentice barrister; Willie Erdman, television executive (what
did
that mean precisely? Billings wondered), then a trainee at the BBC; and – Holly interrupted: ‘My second job, you'll be interested to know, was as a cocktail waitress in a louche bar in the middle of town. I was under age and paid strictly in cash.'

‘Your mother let you?'

‘No. She couldn't stop me, which is different. She was working all hours herself, she couldn't be expected to control a pig-headed girl like me.'