The Spoiler (37 page)

“Tim!”

“Yes?”

He sounded cautious.

“It’s Tamara.”

“Tamara!”

The frisky shout down the line could not mask his wariness.

“How are you?” she asked.

“A bit the worse for wear after last week’s shenanigans.”

“Oh?”

“The Press Awards. Did you hear?”

“I was there.”

“Oh, right …”

He had forgotten her central role in his humiliation. This was a relief as well as an insult.

“What happened?” she asked, testing his memory further.

“A minor scrap with some arsehole. One of your lot, I think, from
The Monitor
.”

“You okay?”

“Bit of a shiner, bruised pride and all that. But you should have seen the state of the other guy.”

“What was it about, your fight?”

“No idea. You know how it is. Some slapper, probably. Anyway, how are
you
doing, my darling? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He had used her, dumped her, broken her heart and insulted her. And now he was talking to her as if they were old friends. She wished Alistair had hit him harder and inflicted some real damage. But this, she reminded herself, was business. Revenge could wait.

“It’s a story. I thought you might be interested.”

“Try me …”

They agreed to meet in a pub five minutes from his office. The Swan was a sour-smelling pit with a neon jukebox playing eighties dance hits. Midafternoon, when Tamara arrived, it was full of men in hard hats and work boots drinking their day’s wages. Hacks from
The Sphere
would arrive later, and then the real fun would begin. As her ex-lover walked in, she tensed herself for pain but was relieved to find she felt only a cringe of embarrassment. The comparison with Dev was stark. He looked old, puffy-faced and seedy, and there was a dark raccoon circle around his right eye, giving him a piratical look. He ordered their drinks and sat down. He seemed nervous and sat on the edge of his seat, a plastic banquette scarred with a constellation of cigarette burns.

“This had better be good,” he said.

“It is.”

He was silent as she pitched the story. By the time she had finished they had both drained their glasses. There was none of the bluff flirtatiousness of this morning’s phone call.

“Let’s get this right,” he said with sarcastic relish. “Some posh pensioner’s been having it off with a young stud? Unhygienic, I admit. But I think you’ll find that falls into
The Sphere
’s WGAT category. As in ‘who gives a toss?’ ”

Tamara was indignant.

“But she’s not just any posh pensioner. She’s famous.”

“Listen, Tam,” he said, lighting a cigarette, “she may be famous as far as the unpopulars are concerned—she might pass as a celebrity in your poncey, low-circulation broadsheets like
The Monitor
and
The Courier
. But for a mass-circulation tabloid like ourselves, the only posh pensioner we’re interested in is the Queen Mum, and if she was in the sack with a good-looking gigolo, it would be a case of ‘God Bless You, Ma’am!’ ”

Tamara tried to curb the pleading note in her voice.

“But Honor Tait’s different.”

“Look, I’d love to help you, Tam. For old times’ sake.” He winked, then clapped his hand to his bruised eye. Alistair’s handiwork was still giving him trouble. There was some satisfaction in that, anyway.

“It’s really not up our street,” he continued. “I don’t know. This Honor Tait. She’s not some leggy supermodel, is she? No one wants to
read about some old bird like that. We don’t want to put our readers off their breakfasts.”

Breakfast? It was not so long ago that this man’s idea of breakfast was a line of coke on Tamara’s breasts. And now he was turning her away as if she were just another desperate freelance trying to flog a duff story.

“But she’s been in all the magazines.
Vogue, Tatler
 …”

He shook his head.

“Sorry, love. We’ve blown our budget on the new promotion campaign—‘Slap a Paedo, Win a Twingo’—and the Pernilla Perssen story.”

“What Pernilla Perssen story?” Tamara asked in sudden panic. Had
The Sphere
got hold of her pregnancy scoop? That would be all she needed.

“One of her exes is spilling the beans on her drug-fuelled three-in-abed romps,” Tim explained.

Tamara was reassured. Her exclusive was safe—any ménages à trois were likely to have preceded Perssen’s pregnancy. This would be old news. She continued to press her claim.

“
The Monitor
’s running a four-thousand-word piece on Honor Tait in the books section in three weeks’ time. Here’s your chance for another spoiler.”

“The books section? Four thousand words? Do me a favour!” he said. “Minority interest. Not the sort of stuff we want to be spending good money on at
The Sphere
.”

“I thought you liked to get the better of
The Monitor
. You shelled out good money to poach that snobby old windbag Bernice Bullingdon,” she said, peevishly picking at the corners of a beer mat.

“Old Bernice?” He laughed. “Yeah, we really wound up Wedderburn there, didn’t we? Got our own back on him for doing the dirty on us with Ricky Clegg.”

Tamara stood her ground.

“This story’s much more interesting than one of Bernice’s screeds on early-day motions and adjournment debates.”

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” he said. “Anything’s more interesting than that. But don’t worry.
The Sphere
’s readers have been spared. Let’s just say Bernice’s been redeployed—she’s known as Bernie the Bin Queen these days.”

Tamara refused to be sidetracked.

“But Honor Tait
used
to be famous. More famous than Pernilla Perssen. Old-style, Hollywood-star famous.”

He glanced at his watch.

“We’re shelling out for some terrific pictures of Pernilla,” he said, his eyes misting with pleasure. “Wait till you see them …”

“Terrific,” Tamara said, without enthusiasm. “But this is a whole different order of story.”

“Look, darling, your Honor Tait—she’s old and she’s ugly, and most of our readers have never heard of her.”

“But they’ve heard of Frank Sinatra. Of her famous friends. Liz Taylor, Marilyn, she knew them all …”

He leaned towards her and patted her knee.

“Sorry, babe. Nice try. But it’s not for us. One more for the road?”

She used his time at the bar to marshal her arguments.

“There was a recent TV show all about her,” she said when he returned with the drinks. “Prime time. She’s involved in all the fashionable left-wing causes. She hangs out with Labour MPs. And movie stars. Jason Kelly. And telly stars. Paul Tucker.”

At the mention of Tucker, a risible figure to Tim and his associates, he spluttered into his drink.

“Don’t tell me she’s shagging Tucker, too.”

“I couldn’t say for certain. But she shagged everyone else. All the greats.”

Tim raised a quizzical eyebrow, forgetting last week’s injury again, then flinched as the pain reminded him.

“Which greats?”

“Sinatra … Picasso … Bing Crosby … Bob Dylan … Castro …”

“Pictures?” He traced a finger tenderly round his eye.

“Yes. I’m sure. Most of them. Not actually in bed together. But together.”

“A goer then.”

“Yes, and that’s the point. She’s still at it. In her eighties and insatiable.”

“So, what’s he like? Her toy boy?”

“Very fit,” Tamara said. “Very fit indeed.” And she allowed herself a smile of dreamy satisfaction.

It could have been the next drink, or the chance to ridicule Paul Tucker, or simply the identity of Tait’s third husband, that changed Tamara’s fortunes.

“Not old Tad Challis?
Hairdressers’ Honeymoon
? Comedy genius?” Tim said. “Ah, good old-fashioned English smut … He must have had his pick of all the saucy starlets, old Tad. This Honor Tait must have been a looker then.”

“Oh, she was,” Tamara said. “Check her out. She really was.”

“I don’t know, Tam. You’re really pushing me on this.”

She gave his thigh a playful pinch through the grey flannel.

“You know how important this story is to me,” she said. “There’s a lot at stake for me here.”

“Look. I don’t know, girl. I’m too soft-hearted for my own good. I’ll see what I can do.”

Tim called her that afternoon. He had ordered up Honor Tait’s picture file.

“They had to go into the depths of the morgue to find the early stuff, but once I’d blown off the dust, it was fantastic,” he said. “Absolutely priceless. What a corker! And she knew them all, didn’t she? Sinatra, Kennedy … you name them, your old biddy had it away with them.”

“She was connected. I told you.”

“Recent stuff’s not so bad, either. Those pictures with that young Kelly bloke. He’s hot, isn’t he? All the girls on the desk have been oohing and aahing over him. She looks like she’d have him for breakfast, the old bag. We’ll have some fun with this.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“Can you get the goods this weekend? We’ll rush it in for the Sunday after. Front-page splash and two double-page spreads?”

At the other end of the line, Tamara gave a victor’s clenched-fist salute.

“What happened to the Pernilla Perssen story?” she asked.

“It’s running in
The News of the World
this week.”

For an editor who had learned he was to be the victim of a spoiler, Tim sounded surprisingly cheerful.

“You lost the story?” she asked.

“The guy was a complete con man,” he said. “Pictures were a set-up, with a bargain basement Pernilla-lookalike. We sent him over to
The
News of the World
. Looks like they’re going to take the bait and blow their budget for the next six months. And then there’ll be their legal fees. They’ll be stuffed.”

How many more times was she going to subject herself to this degradation, Honor asked herself; the tedious business of washing and dressing, then forcing herself out, dragging dread in every step, to be stripped back, exposed and reduced to her unappetising essence? Mutton to the slaughter. She knew she should not complain. If Lois had been offered the choice, she would have favoured daily colonoscopies and CAT scans in full possession of her intellectual faculties over perfect physical health and Alzheimer’s. She might have bridled at today’s doctor, however. A young privately educated swaggerer, he had an inauthentic line in sympathy. His indifference was obvious. Honor could almost hear it: “What the hell do you expect?”

Back at her flat, she continued her labours. The maid had been shocked when she arrived this morning and asked whether there had been a break-in. When she learned the truth she was even more horrified and refused to throw away the bags of books, clothes and trinkets. She would not even take them to a charity shop. For an unnerving moment Honor feared there might be tears, until she agreed to let the maid have the junk herself. Honor could not imagine where she would put it all in her overcrowded council flat.

There really was not much more to do. Honor took the newspaper and ripped it up, wrapping the torn pages around Tad’s precious Sèvres cups, which she stuffed in a plastic bag with other breakables—Aidan’s scent bottle, champagne glasses, and the vase. More junk for the maid.

She poured herself a drink and sat down in the empty gloom of the sitting room. So what, she wondered, watching her shadow rear against the bare walls, would an interviewer make of this room now? And what would it matter? It was easier to perceive error than to find truth—Goethe again—but sometimes it was impossible to discern either.

Even the astute could get it wrong. She had done so herself. Unforgivably, in the forest of Ettersberg. She could not face this now. Easier to contemplate, and with consequences no greater than private embarrassment, was her account for
The Paris Review
of the reclusive Canadian
writer living alone in upstate New York in a clapboard farmhouse, his wife long fled and their children with her. Honor had found him stooped and rheumy eyed in that wintry house, warming his hands, metaphorically, over the fading embers of his literary fame. By the fireplace in his lonely house she had noticed an empty magnum of champagne, a dusty souvenir of that tabloid staple—happier times. He had turned his attic into a museum of his early success: walls crowded with framed reviews of his one best-selling novel, lurid posters and stills from the film adaptation (Tad had been first assistant director) and photographs of miniskirted starlets, eyes canopied by extravagant lashes, smiling in the company of a fashionable writer in a Carnaby Street suit who couldn’t believe his good fortune.

He had shown Honor round, talking solely of that one book, three decades old: the writing of it, the revising of it, the publication of it, the sales figures, the filming of it. Every attempt she had made to change the subject—his other books, contemporary politics, his family, the house, the garden—had been steered back thirty years to the glory days of that one bright triumph when everyone, even the critics, had wished him well and the earlier years of disappointment and failure seemed behind him for ever. How could he have known then that, after a brief scherzo of success, failure would be the leitmotif in a lifelong symphony of loss and bitterness?

It was not until her melancholy article had been printed that she received a call from a former colleague from
The Herald Tribune
, long retired and cultivating dahlias in the Chenango Valley.

“So you saw old G—? Did you get a sight of the Vestal Virgins?”

These, she learned, were the writer’s twenty-year-old lovers, identical twin sisters, rosy Renoir beauties of Irish origin from a housing project in Vestal, outside Binghamton, who had exchanged their jobs behind the till in the local supermarket for a wing of the farmhouse, champagne on demand and monthly shopping sprees. Yes, you could be gulled. And well-meaning misinterpretations could be as damaging as maliciously revealed truths. It had to be faced.