The Bulgari Connection (15 page)

Poor Doris Dubois, says Dr Doom. As well pity a steamroller. Poor me, I say. He says it is the fate of all mothers to have a hard time from their daughters. How can I know? I only have a son, and I am sure Carmichael, though he backs out of the picture when the going gets rough, doesn't spend his life running off with other men's wives to spite his father because he loves me too much, he just spends his life hopelessly in love with men who don't love him. To which Dr Doom would, no doubt, briskly reply: he's just recreating his childhood, trying to attract his father's attention and so on – so I don't even bother to discuss it with him. You can never win with therapists. Conscious of his duty to the Court, he asks a few questions to make sure I have no immediate intention of killing Doris Dubois, and that is the end of the session.

My fancy roams these days. I look at Dr Doom with a speculative eye and wonder what he'd be like in bed, what kind of children he'd make. I married Barley so young I suppose I never went through that stage, and have to do it now. Or else it's just a positive transference; everyone, he says, falls in love with their therapist at first. Well, bless me, do they then! ‘Falling in love' means something very different to him than it does to me; to him it seems some quiet inclination, some gentle obsession. To me it's life-earthquake stuff. The negative transference – apparently also to be expected – to him is a mild dislike, an acid word: to me it's car-ramming murder.

Dr Jamie Doom poo-poos my notion that I'm getting younger by the week and my emotions therefore flow more freely. An agreeable fiction, he says; you always looked good, even in the most stressful moments during the break-up of your marriage. How placid and passive that sounds; something that just happens, like an ice floe coming apart.
The break-up of your marriage.
No-one's fault, hot weather or something. But it bloody was someone's fault, and I wish I'd managed to mow her down. I may yet.

10.15a.m.

Flora Upchurch called Barley at his office, which was in Upper Brook Street, within walking distance of Claridges, and Barley offered to use his influence to get them a table at the Ivy for lunch. Surprisingly, he had a free lunch that day. It had been Sir Ronald's turn to cancel, but he read nothing sinister into that. These summonses from Downing Street came from time to time and had to be obeyed; the appointment had been remade for the following week, when both men were able to find a window in their schedules.

‘Isn't the Ivy a bit public?' Flora asked, puzzling him a bit. What did she mean? Obviously there was nothing between him and Flora. She was like the daughter he and Grace should have had. And Doris wouldn't mind. It was a Wednesday. The show went out on Thursdays so Wednesday was Doris's really busy day, there was no way Doris could come too. Odd that Flora, on the show as well, could make a Wednesday lunch but no doubt she'd tell him all about it over Caesar salad or caramelised onion tart. He would have the latter, since it was lunch with Flora, not with Doris. Then he'd probably choose the fishcakes.

Barley was happy to hear from Flora. Sometimes it was pleasant to be reminded of his past calm life with Grace, of the days when Wild Oats was all of a piece and called the Manor House, there was a familiar bed to go to, and the restful contours of a lifelong partner under the blankets. It was not that he had been actively unhappy with Grace, just bored. He had needed a woman with more vitality, more up and go, and had found one in Doris. When he had Grace, of course, he had been able to slip out from time to time to energise himself: now he had Doris he would not dare, but then why would he want to? Doris used up all available sexual energies and even a bit more; he would arrive at his office quite tired and that was not always a good thing. A good mood, yes, but one missed clues, rumours in the wind. Perhaps more sex at night, less in the morning, was the way to keep his edge.

It would be his birthday soon. One was as old as one felt, and he felt pretty young. He had Doris to thank for that. And she didn't make a fuss of birthdays the way Grace had, unnecessarily emphasising and publicising the passage of the years. Age was something you kept to yourself.

All the same, hearing Flora's soft voice, he had been vividly reminded of the night they'd all stayed up ghost hunting, with coffee and sandwiches. A sudden happy painful memory. Grace's soft thigh pressed up against his in the dark, and her whispery laughter, a sudden renewal of sexual interest that surprised him. But without Flora as catalyst it wouldn't have happened. A marriage that needed a third person around to bring it to life couldn't be all that good. And shortly after that he appeared on Doris's show and he and she had got together, and that was that. And Flora had come along to the wedding, and looked very good and cheerful, so he assumed she thought the formalisation of the union was a good thing, and was on his side in the divorce, not that sides needed to be taken, or not until Grace had put herself out of court – or into it, as it happened – trying to mow poor Doris down in the Jaguar, which had shocked and upset her no end. Doris was not as tough as she looked. Grace always had been a rotten driver: couldn't even drive straight enough to get Doris. Doris was smooth, flawless and confident at the wheel. He loved being driven by her. He must call up Bulgari and see how the necklace was getting on. He'd have to move funds about a bit when the time came: the portion in the Cayman Islands would have to be released. He'd manage. He always had. Well, mostly.

Lunch with Flora, without Grace. He had never had to worry about the possibility of Grace being unfaithful. It had simply not been in her nature, though once she was on her own it was remarkable how soon she'd shacked up with someone else. That hurt him, rather. He could see infidelity might well be in Doris's impulsive nature, but she was too busy; when would she find the time for extra-marital adventure, and why should she want to? Was not he, the great Barley Salt, more than enough to fill heart, mind and body? Thank God the unfortunate episode of the morning before hadn't rattled her, nor indeed him. Just as the mere thought of the sleeping pills in the bathroom cupboard, there to be taken in an emergency, can be enough to induce a good night's sleep, so the awareness of Viagra, just a doctor's prescription away, gave sexual confidence.

Onion tart, fishcakes. He'd have a helping of fat chips too, with mayonnaise. And wine, yes, the Californian. He'd always drunk French until Doris came along and gave him confidence.

11.10a.m.

A friendly phone call from a member of the Government. Barley was not to worry, if he was worrying. Opera Noughtie was too favourite a Government project for it to be abandoned. Although the swing was towards Science and Decommissioning away from the Arts, which meant Billyboy Justice's Millennium Cleanup project was looking distinctly bullish, it was more likely to find a site in Wales than Scotland. There was now some talk of combining the all-European lewisite operation with the overdue Sellafield cleanup, and the very word nuclear was a red rag to an Argyle bull. Opera might induce yawns up and down the Firth of Forth but singing was at least safe. It never did a regime down South any good to stir up the Picts in the North; they rumbled away with their discontent at the best of times, no-one wanted them actually to boil over.

Barley's PA called Harrods and had them send a dozen bottles of a rather acceptable single-malt to his contact in the Government – for Christmas. Normally Barley would have asked the bloke down to the country for the weekend, but that was out of the question at the moment.

11.20 a.m.

A message from reception. Could his chauffeur – Ross – have a minute of his time? Barley hoped there was not trouble with Doris, who had it in for Ross. She wanted some slim young thing to drive them round, it seemed. She didn't like Ross's looks, his accent, his dandruff, his belly. Now there was some business of making Ross weigh in every Friday: a management technique, Barley suspected. You set up some plausible, but near impossible task in the apparent interest of the employee, and when the latter fails to deliver you have a good answer ready for the unfair dismissal tribunal.

Doris complained Ross was on Grace's side. Barley didn't think Ross cared two hoots who sat beside Barley in the back, though he did sometimes transmit a certain antagonism through his broad-shouldered back. Ross saw his job as driving Barley around, and was loyal to his employer. He was on Barley's side. Though now Doris had taken over the staff, saying Barley was too soft and paid too much and employees only despised you for it, she had already cost him one PA, three gardeners and one maid. Barley did not want Ross to go. Ross knew every rat run in London, and how to get out of trouble in a hurry; a chauffeur who doubled as a bodyguard was the thing to have, these days. Barley would have to have a word with Doris about this.

Ross was shown in, and said he was handing in his notice. He had weighed himself at the Health Club which the former Mrs Salt had recommended, and now that Doris had made him go on a diet he had put on three pounds. No, there was nothing wrong with the scales; they belonged to the Health Club. He had been offered another job, with a detective agency. Barley prevailed upon him to stay until the end of the year. Ross, who was almost tearful, agreed.

11.40a.m.

Doris calls. ‘Just to say I love you, and we've a terrific show tonight. I've seen the Leadbetter clips' – Leadbetter was all set to win the Turner with a trompe-l'oeil painting in a frame made of compacted sewage of the kind they fed to turkeys in France – ‘and they're fantastic: they let us film him in drag! The guy works in Blahnik heels …'

‘Doris,' said Barley, ‘I've just had Ross up here in my office. He's handing in his notice. I don't want that. I like him.' ‘He's too fat,' said Doris. ‘Too twentieth-century. We deserve better than Ross.'

‘I'm dealing with the Russians, Doris. I need a bodyguard.' He wondered if he really did. The Opera Noughtie scheme was going to go through, but it could do no harm to impress upon Doris the kind of man she was with.

‘Good God,' said Doris. ‘Ross's so slow on his feet he couldn't get a cow with a Kalashnikov.'

He wondered if she were taking drugs. But she couldn't be, could she? She said they didn't agree with her. ‘He's agreed to stay to the end of the year,' said Barley. ‘I don't want any more of these weigh-ins.'

‘That's okay then,' said Doris brightly. ‘So long as he goes at the end of the year. My, we are serious today.' He forgot to tell her he was lunching with Flora.

11.45a.m.-12.15p.m.

Phone calls from various contacts in the building world, architects and engineers, wanting contracts, offering work. Business was brisk out there. Office buildings and arts complexes springing into life all over the city, all over the country. And bridges, but the less said about them the better. Thank God he'd had nothing to do with that project. These periods of brisk economic activity – he'd been told they coincided with sunspots – were once marked by the urgent pinging of fax machines all over the building, but now there was an eerie hush: communication was by the swift silent transmission of e-mail through virtual space. Twenty of them waiting on his machine – they could wait – and probably about fifty straight through to his PA.

He'd be happier if he'd got the foundations for Opera Noughtie actually into the ground six months back. He hated this stage of things, when all other funds were in place and you had to wait for the green light for matching subsidies from the State. At least in this country the government only changed by way of election, not by coup.

He never touched a project in Africa, or in Polynesia. 12.30p.m.

A phone call from Miranda in reception.

‘There's a young lady to see you. Well, not exactly young. I'm not sure what she wants, but she says it's personal.'

‘I'm just out to lunch at the Ivy.'

‘Oh! She's taken the lift up, she's on her way. I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't stop her. She's left her shopping bag behind.' ‘That's okay, I'll deal with her.'

She was called Natasha. She looked young enough to Barley. She had a plump high bosom and a tiny belted waist, long thin legs, gold sandals with very high heels, and a mass of reddish-gold curls. She spoke very bad English very fast. She started to unbutton her white lacey blouse even as she came in, to display patches of rather brownish freckled bosom. Barley was too startled to lift the phone and call for help. She said she had been sent by her friend Mr Makarov to see if there was any way in which she could assist Barley. He had a spare lunch hour, she knew.

Makarov? Familiar, but not all that familiar. Hadn't there been someone of that name at Lady Juliet's charity auction? The one at which Grace had gone off with the painter? Someone standing next to Billyboy Justice? Things were going on here that shouldn't be. A blatant honey trap. Once these were confined to Moscow hotels with bulky KGB cameras in the chandeliers: now they had moved to London and the cameras and microphones were so miniaturised they fitted into the underwire of the bra and the elastic of the knickers. How did she know his lunch date had cancelled?

He shooed her out before she could disrobe any further and she left her card, pouting and biting her plump lip.

12.45p.m.

When he went down to reception Miranda was giggling. Miranda was on a state-subsidised youth-employment scheme. That is to say she worked for free, while the government paid her the dole. He would offer her a proper job, he thought. She was bright and funny and eager, though she was spotty, spoke badly and couldn't spell. At least she washed her hair sometimes which was more than many of the job applicants did, and it flowed fluffily around, and didn't hang dankly.

Together they looked in the Selfridges bags Natasha had left. Twenty pairs of transparent net panties and matching bras in red and gold spots, twenty pairs in leopard-skin, twenty in orange patterned with blue fish. Twenty leather thongs. ‘She'll be back for them, when she remembers,' said Miranda.