The Bulgari Connection (8 page)

This morning I went swimming again and the waters opened up before me like the Dead Sea and I swam three lengths non-stop, easily. Walter made rather a meal of his normal five lengths and took a minute longer to complete the course than usual. But then we'd been at it all night. Five times, I think without a condom because of course we don't have to worry about having babies. This is my great regret, that I can't give him one; but I don't think he's worried. When I sat on the wooden bench in the cubicle to dry my feet it seemed to me that the flesh round my heels and the top edge of the soles was no longer purplish with broken veins but quite smooth and white. A little blue and sodden from the cold water – the heaters had broken down again, and as for the wave machine, forget it – but no more than that. Extraordinary what happiness can do. It speeds me up but slows Walter down, as if our bodies were seeking some kind of equilibrium of age. He is painting my portrait. I take that very kindly.

‘Darling,' said Doris Dubois to Barley Salt, as they lay side by side in bed on a morning a little chillier than usual: the Indian summer was over: the trees in St James's Park had turned to gold, and the ducks fluffed out their feathers in the Round Pond, and Doris and Barley's London walks were brisker and shorter than they had been. They would get as far as the Albert Memorial, and admire its gilded glory, but before they reached Sloane Street Barley would suggest they turned back. ‘Now what are we going to do about this necklace of mine?'

‘We're going to wait,' said Barley Salt firmly, ‘until various business affairs of mine are settled. Then you can have two.'

‘A Bulgari necklace in the hand is worth two in the bush,' said Doris. ‘I would really like one now and another one later. Who is to say what will happen in six months from now? You might have fallen out of love with me.'

‘Never!' He could not contemplate that.

‘My show might be taken off the air. There could be a palace revolution. Remember what happened to Vanessa Feltz.'

‘You're the Queen of the ratings and Queen of my heart. No-one would dare.'

‘There are straws in the wind. My dress should have made more than £3000. People just don't care any more. They're turning against me. Everything's going wrong. The ceiling fell down on our bed. An hour later and we would have been killed. We raved on air about
Grendel's Mother
,' – a new musical which had just bombed – ‘and now the theatre's closing and what does that make me? A f***ing idiot, out of touch with public taste. And if Wanda Azim doesn't get the Booker for
Sister K
my name is going to be mud. We've really pushed that novel and it isn't honestly all that good – Dostoevsky did it better. My touch is slipping, darling, the magic's seeping out of everything.'

Doris was quite panicky, trembly, sitting up in bed. He'd noticed she got like this sometimes. She presented such a smooth and confident face to her public that only he, her intimate, her bed companion, knew what she went through; understood the tensions of the job and what she battled against.

‘£3000 plus, for a dress that cost £600 an hour earlier isn't too bad a profit margin,' he consoled her. ‘Five hundred per cent. Think about it, Doris. Just for having been in contact with your body.' His sums were swift and serviceable, and convincing at a meeting, if not necessarily accurate.

‘The portrait of that cow Lady Juliet got at least twenty times its worth, and she's a nonentity. I know exactly what they paid the artist. I should have done better.'

‘At least my ex-wife didn't buy the dress. You wouldn't have liked that.'

‘She might have,' said Doris, frightened. ‘If she can afford to buy paintings at charity auctions you're paying her far too much alimony. I want you to go to court and get it reduced.'

He tried to stroke her limbs into tranquillity, move her mouth into a smile, but she stayed quivery and anxious, tossing her head from side to side. She had taken cocaine the evening before. Only a little, she said, to give her courage and pizzazz for the show, she'd never take it recreationally, only for work, but how was he to know what was a little and what was a lot? He knew nothing about drugs. He needed to be in control of his circumstances at all times.

They were in bed in one of the guest rooms which was, miraculously, so far untouched by the decorators, and was much as Grace had left it; that is to say, full of soft chintz chairs, traditional rosewood furniture, and with flower paintings on the walls. They'd had to move out of the master bedroom a week earlier. The ceiling had fallen; a mass of old plaster and choking lime-dust had come tumbling down upon the bed and, bringing with it as it did a heavy new erotic central light fitting, sculpted in tangled wrought iron, designed by an Italian who normally made chocolate phalluses but who had lately turned her mind to art, had bent the bedstead altogether out of its expensive, elegant shape. The mattress could be salvaged, the bed itself could not. What was soft and pliant survived, as Barley pondered, what was rigid and determined seldom did.

He doubted that the insurance company would pay out for yet another claim. Already a leaking swimming pool, a collapse of the new garage into old iron workings underground, a hundred more minor mishaps Doris had insisted on claiming for, while he told her to wait for the biggie, warned her that it was a bad idea to waste goodwill on trivia. Now the biggie had happened. Something had gone wrong when the roof of the West Wing was being lifted six inches: incompetent workmen had let slip a heavy steel beam, which had crashed through a floor left for some reason almost without supporting beams. He had tried to suggest to Doris that they move to an hotel while work was completed, but she hated hotels. This was her home and she would not let Grace drive her out.

The last statement surprised him. What had Grace got to do with it? He had not imagined, especially after the murder attempt, that Doris felt even residual guilt about living in Grace's old house. A lot of things had gone wrong, but when you considered the mountain tribesmen Doris insisted on employing, through an extremely dubious building firm who got its workers free through a government work experience scheme, for some reason to do with her social conscience and her reputation with the public, it didn't require a curse from Grace to make things go wrong. Besides, he had reason to believe, from what Ross told him, that Grace was happy again. He was greatly relieved, if also surprised, to find himself acutely jealous. He had not expected this from himself.

He could not give in to pointless emotions. Life was essentially simple. Women failed to get to the top not because of male prejudice but because they refused to treat it as simple. They looked for emotional complications, and found them. Any male executive of forty had a wife and children at home. His female equivalent seldom did. Why? She'd wasted too much time and energy being female, preening and combing in front of mirrors, talking about her feelings, and five days out of every twenty-eight grasping her stomach and groaning. How did they expect to get to the top, let alone stay there? Not their fault, and certainly not man's: God's, if anyone's. Doris did not believe in God. We appeared on this earth, according to her, and then ran around a bit looking after oneself, and then winked out. And that was that. He, Barley, thought there was probably a bit more to it than that. Odd that Doris then had a concept of curses and he did not.

In the meantime, he, Barley Salt, could not afford to give way to unreasonable emotions such as sexual jealousy, added to the conviction that this Walter Wells was after Grace's money since he could not be after her body, Grace being past all that. Two mutually exclusive emotions. It would take up too much time trying to sort them out. He needed to focus his attention on the fact that Billyboy Justice and Co. were suddenly breathing down his neck over the Edinburgh site; they'd been caught mooting it about in government circles that it would do for some kind of chemical plant the government had to provide under international law, and quickly. Out of town, and on the estuary for contaminated shipping. He hadn't liked the fact that Billyboy had been at the Randoms'. Sir Ron put it about that Billyboy fancied Juliet, and that his heart bled for Little Children, Everywhere, but there was probably more to it than that. Government attitudes these days switched with the latest poll: they'd been pretty much static on environment-friendly and anti-industry issues lately, and pro-development – big high-profile developments, at any rate – but they could easily swing back to pro-science-and-industry policies, and any incipient arts complex might get scuppered.

The odds, once ninety-nine out of a hundred, were down to eighty. Not good at all. Not the kind of margin he felt safe with; he remembered the horrible meltdown when Carmichael was small and the house had had to go into Gracie's name. She'd given it back without a murmur. He couldn't quite see Doris doing that. Not that there was going to be much house left, the way things were going.

In the meantime here was Doris quivering and moaning and weeping in his arms. He'd thrown in his life with Doris, he would see it through. That was that.

‘It's my birthday next week,' she was moaning. ‘You know how I hate birthdays. Everything going downhill, I bet you haven't even planned a celebration, not even a surprise party, why can't this horrible building work ever be finished, it's all Grace's fault, she never looked after a thing and God knows she never had anything to do, not like I have. What did she do all day? Eat, from the look of her. I hate this room, I want our proper bedroom back, you don't love me, why should you, I'm such a mess.'

‘Our' bedroom made him feel happy. He was always pleased and gratified to be included in Doris's scheme of things. She was a Scorpio, full of charm, sexual charisma and spite. If she couldn't find anyone to sting she would sting herself to death, if need be. He'd worked with Scorpios in his time. They could make you go dancing to your own death.

Rashly, he asked her if she was pre-testosterone-menstrual. He knew she was, not that she let a little mess stand in the way of their pleasures. She fell upon him tooth and claw, as he had rather anticipated, and with Doris the boundaries between murder and sex were blurred. He was egged on to a powerful and determined sexual performance.

‘We'll go to Bulgari tomorrow and buy the necklace,' he said. He was already exhausted, emotionally more than physically, and the day had only just begun.

‘Why not today?' she was half joking, sunshine after squalls, fitful, trying to settle back into happiness. She was six years old sometimes. He was so moved by her, he gave in. ‘Okay,' he agreed. ‘Today.'

He'd manage it at lunchtime. He had been meeting Random at the club, but he'd cancel. He doubted it would tip any balances. And there was nothing more fun than shopping for jewels with Doris, knowledgeable as she was about fine stones, about almost everything, come to that; nothing more soothing than the soft-carpeted opulence of Bulgari, and the attentive staff, and the hushed reverence with which they attended to the whims of their customers, with that timeless and exquisite courtesy which has been offered the rich since society began. ‘Then that's settled then,' said Doris. But she did add that if he was ever strapped for money she would of course give it back, and he could probably get what she wanted cheaper, if he was in the business of cheap, if he made an offer for the ruby and diamond necklace Lady Juliet had been wearing in the portrait. ‘Because of course I can do all that Lady Juliet serene style too, if I want. Simple white dress, blonde hair on top and just the one spectacular piece. Not even earrings to match.' Did he think when she, Doris, wore the antique coin necklace with the matching earrings it was over the top? No? Good. And the conversation drifted back to how Wanda Azim had better win the Booker or her (Doris's) name would be mud in literary circles throughout the land.

And then: ‘Put your arms round me,' she said, and they snuggled together happily for a bit, all passion spent; and she met him at Bulgari that lunchtime. On the way through the park, under the gilded spire of the Albert Memorial, with its writhing caryatids and pale bosomy imperial ladies, she kissed him and said what she really wanted for her birthday was a portrait of herself by Walter Wells. There, a bargain! One Bulgari necklace and one painting by Walter Wells would cost less than the two Bulgari necklaces he had promised her.

He said he'd think about it, but his mind was on other things: he'd just seen Billyboy Justice at the wheel of his own limo negotiating the new unexpected humps in the road opposite the Serpentine Gallery, and sitting next to him the Russian who had been at Lady Juliet's for the auction. Barley knew, he just knew, that Billyboy was going to lunch with Sir Ronald Random, and they'd be talking about how the country needed a greater industrial base if it was to hold its own in the new Europe, and Art might be the part of the great way forward for France but it was not for Britain. And Sir Ronald Random, having been stood up by Barley at such short notice, might be paying more attention than he normally would.

It didn't help that Lady Juliet seemed fond of Grace, or she wouldn't have been asked to the auction. People, even in this day and age, did still seem to take sides. It had seemed such a simple idea at the time, to divorce Grace and marry Doris, and no-one's business but their own.

He'd been wrong, and he was not accustomed to being wrong.

Walter Wells loves me. At night his hands explore my body, and it doesn't even occur to me that he will find fault with any part of me. After years of sleeping with Barley and worrying if my tummy is too fat, am I doing the right thing, should I just lie here or should I involve myself more? His strong cool fingers move over my thigh, my back, over all my warm being, my smaller rounded compact self enclosed in his long bony self. How naked men and women complement each other in a bed: him hard, her soft, all that yin and yang stuff. So much pleasure! He pinches my flesh between finger and thumb, as if to prove it's real, that he's not dreaming. Yet this body of mine is all imperfection; by what magic is he so deluded? What was once smooth and resilient is now dry to the touch, and flabbier, so unfamiliar to me when my own fingers encounter it, it could belong to a stranger, a third in the bed.