Читать книгу Dead Alone - Gay Longworth - Страница 14

Jessie placed her helmet on the wooden boards by the door and prayed her bleeper wouldn’t go off. The flat housed two women too busy to buy anything. There was nothing on the walls except the previous inhabitants’ choice of paint; the floors were bare and the rooms blessedly uncluttered. Maggie’s only possessions were clothes and make-up, most of which she had purloined from the make-up rooms and wardrobes of television centres around the country. This, she assured Jessie, was normal.

The lights were on, but the flat was silent. Jessie knew the signs. Maggie had had bad news. She pushed the door to the sitting room open and saw Maggie sitting cross-legged on the floor. She did not look up. Instead she held out a piece of newspaper.

‘Bastard,’ she whispered.

Jessie took the newspaper and began to read.

Dear Lord. Give me strength. Is it too much to ask for – an intelligent female presenter of an intelligent show? Clearly it is. Bar the rare exception, TV has become the vessel of the inane, mundane and vain. The saturation of the saccharine blonde was distressing enough, but now they come at us with banal brunettes who I presume by their hair colour are supposed to at least look intelligent. Don’t be fooled. These women are in fact lower down the evolutionary scale than their pitiful predecessors. These are the new blondes. Faux blondes. Blondeabees. And they are springing up like weeds. Chickweed, to be precise. An abundant plant which is known to be particularly troublesome on rich soil. I write this as a warning to all those impressionable producers, pop stars and players. They, like the blondes before them, will suck your AmEx dry.

I could name them all but fear the heavy hand of the ever-watchful lawyers. There is, however, one I feel I must pick on. I couldn’t live with myself if I let this pass without comment. Shown last week, ‘The Olive Oil Revolution’ was a programme about the changing eating habits of the British population. A reasonably interesting subject matter, you would have thought. Wrongly, as it turns out. It was utterly and spectacularly unchallenging. The presenter, I admit, was working with some pretty dire material, but even so she managed to lower the tone. Maggie Hall shook her equine mane, beating all the L’Oreal girls in an instant, and declared that we eat Italian food because it is ‘yummy’. Come back, Anthea – all is forgiven.

Jessie looked at her flatmate, who shook her head mournfully. There was no point telling her it didn’t matter, that no one read such columns, that the paper it was printed on would be polishing shoes and wrapping up broken glass tomorrow; she’d tried before and words didn’t work.

‘It gets worse,’ said Maggie, as Jessie leant down beside her and gave her a hug. ‘He was on some chat show yesterday.’

‘Who?’

‘Joshua Cadell, the creep who writes this shit.’

‘Slagging you off ?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘Just increasing his sphere of influence by a few thousand miles. They watch him on telly, they’ll sure as shit read his column.’

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Jessie.

Maggie didn’t have to respond to Jessie’s declaration. Ask Jessie how long it would take a six-foot man weighing fourteen stone to bleed to death and she could tell you without hesitation. Put a gun to her head and ask her who was Number One in the charts and she would have to say ‘pull’.

‘You may not have heard of him, but you’ll have heard of his mother. Dame Henrietta Cadell.’

‘The author?’

‘Queen of the literati, the doyenne of all historical biographers. He is her son.’

‘So?’

‘That makes him famous by proxy. Even if people only read his column to slag him off, they still read it.’

‘Listen, Maggie, you said yourself the script was poor. He’s taken the “yummy” comment out of context –’

‘I know that. Doesn’t make it read any better though, does it?’

Jessie stood up. ‘Want a drink?’

‘There’s a bottle open,’ said Maggie.

There always was.

‘At least there was some good news today,’ said Maggie when Jessie returned to the room, boots off, glass in hand. ‘I got my first bit of obsessed stalker mail. Now that is a good sign.’

Jessie hoped Maggie was being sarcastic. She didn’t want to put her flatmate in the same bracket as the desperate Jami Talbot.

Maggie threw her the envelope. ‘Not the most stunning bit of prose you’ve ever read, but it beats the signed-photograph hunters with all their gushing.’

‘It wasn’t so long ago that you loved every last gush.’

Maggie shrugged.

Jessie looked at the solitary page of cheap blue writing paper. ‘I know you want me as much as I want you, I’m waiting for you in our special place.’ Jessie looked up. ‘That’s not funny. Do you know who sent this?’

‘Course I don’t.’

‘What “special place”?’

Maggie shrugged again.

‘Do you want me to get it checked out?’

‘God no, it’s only some nutter. Everyone needs a stalker.’

‘Maggie, you should take this seriously –’

Jessie felt a cushion land on the side of her face.

‘I’m joking!’ exclaimed Maggie. ‘God, I worry about you sometimes.’

Ditto, thought Jessie.

‘Come on, Miss Marple, let’s watch this video and see if the bastard nails me.’

Maggie put the video in and they watched the clock tick down the seconds. It was a pre-recorded show; a friend in the edit suite had copied it for Maggie. Today with Ray.

‘This is just a shit cable channel,’ said Jessie. ‘I wouldn’t worry about this.’

‘People watch this.’

‘Who? Who watches it?’

‘People,’ said Maggie belligerently.

There was no point trying to reason with Maggie while she was like this. Relativity and ambition didn’t go hand in hand. Jessie watched a man with pale blue eyes fill the screen. His hair was white and cropped short, his face was lined but he carried it well, like Clint Eastwood. His scalp was tanned where the hair had thinned. He wore an open-necked shirt – blue, to match his insipid eyes. A small gold cross was embedded in the white hairs on his chest. It matched the cap on his incisor.

‘Who is this con?’ said Jessie. ‘He’s got HMP written all over him.’

‘Shh,’ said Maggie, increasing the volume. ‘There’s Joshua Cadell and his mother.’

Jessie stared at the robed woman walking on to the set. She was about five foot eleven and was carrying at least four stone too many. She had wiry amber hair that enveloped her head and shoulders. Her jewellery matched her hair and the design matched her shape. ‘She’s huge –’

‘Shh, listen.’

‘… and so to the bloodthirsty world of fourteenth-century Britain. For this week’s “Mother’n’-Son” we have here in the studio Dame Henrietta Cadell, author of Isabella of France, which is out this week, and her son Joshua, author of the weekly satirical column, “The Mallard”. Henrietta, I’ve flicked through all your biographies and was quite shocked by the violent nature of most of them …’

‘Bastard,’ said Maggie again. ‘Satirical fucking column.’

‘… do you think the violent nature of your books has helped you corner the market in mediaeval biography?’

The majestic woman laughed behind a bejewelled hand, smiled for the camera and began to talk.

‘People are interested in history. They should be. You cannot predict the future, but you can understand the past. Insight. It’s all anyone really needs. And insight comes from history. I think that is why all my books are so successful. Everyone can find something in the past that they can empathise with, take consolation from –’

‘Like infidelity.’

The smile remained fixed on the author’s heavily made-up mouth, but her eyes told another story. Dame Henrietta Cadell clearly thought herself far too classy for this outfit. ‘Absolutely. The list is endless; it’s about betrayal, loss, love, war – even murder, Mr St Giles.’

‘Yes. You describe Edward II’s death quite flamboyantly.’

‘Mr St Giles, don’t tell me you are squeamish about violence.’ Henrietta Cadell smiled malevolently at the interviewer. ‘I would have thought hot pokers were right up your street.’

The corner of St Giles’ mouth flickered upwards, and he turned towards Joshua. The columnist was tall like his mother, but very thin and pasty. He had none of Dame Henrietta’s colouring, none of her pizzazz. He wore a plain black suit and his black hair was pulled tightly off his face. His cheeks looked hollow under the overhead studio lights. Joshua Cadell was a pale imitation of his mother.

‘It must have been very alarming, growing up around blood and guts, Joshua?’ asked the blue-eyed interviewer.

‘I grew up around history, as my mother has already said, learning the repetitive nature of mankind. Blood and guts have nothing to do with it.’

‘Still, you didn’t want to write yourself?’

‘I do write.’

‘Yes, but not books …’

‘Who is this guy?’ interrupted Maggie. ‘I love him, he’s ripping the arsehole apart.’

‘Ray St Giles,’ said Jessie quietly before standing up. Keeping one eye on the screen, she backed out of the room to fetch her heavily laden backpack from the hall.

‘I’ve read your column – quite the executioner’s style,’ continued St Giles.

Maggie swore loudly.

‘If you can’t stand up and be counted,’ said Joshua Cadell, not looking into the camera, ‘don’t stand up at all.’

‘Fair enough. But don’t you think people who criticise others should at least have achieved something themselves?’

Maggie clapped her hands. ‘Bloody hell, this guy’s evil. Mark my words, he’ll have a cult following before you can say “Whoops, there goes Jerry.”’

‘Evil,’ repeated Jessie, removing a manila file from the backpack. The camera zoomed in to the presenter’s face. Jessie looked up from the open file and pressed pause.

‘Hey, I’m enjoying this.’

The television flickered. Raymond Giles. Ray St Giles. The ex-con who had orphaned Clare Mills. The studio lights reflected in his pale blue eyes. He was smiling, his crooked, capped tooth the only evidence of his criminal past.

‘When was this on?’ Jessie asked.

‘Three in the afternoon yesterday. Why?’

Just the time Clare Mills’ video recorder had automatically switched on. Jessie recalled the array of video cassettes that had adorned Clare’s shelves where books should have been. Ray St Giles, Clare’s nemesis, a chat-show host. No wonder the poor woman didn’t sleep much.